A new way to get pesticides off apples

No matter what your favorite apple is, unfortunately, chances are it’s coated in pesticides! For the past eight years, apples have been in the Environmental Working Group’s list of the Dirty Dozen produce, with the most pesticide residues. In fact, apples held the No. 1 spot five years running.

Now researchers have found a great way to get most of the pesticides off apples, and it’s not by rubbing them on your shirt.

A study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry says soaking apples in a 1 percent baking soda/water solution is more effective than a two-minute chlorine rinse or tap water. Testing for two kinds of pesticide (thiabendazole and phosmet), it took 12 and 15 minutes for the baking soda solution to banish all surface residue. However, 20 percent of the applied thiabendazole and 4.4 percent of the applied phosmet penetrated into the apples, so you might be better off with organic varieties.

Bring a bushel of apples home, mix three tablespoons of baking soda into a gallon of water and soak your apples for 15 minutes. Then wash them off in tap water. You also could peel the fruit, but you’ll lose the peel’s nutrients.

Don’t vape if you’re pregnant

E-cigs can contain nicotine, along with vegetable glycerin, propylene glycol, water and flavorings. When heated, propylene glycol produces the toxic substances acrolein, formaldehyde and benzene. The jury’s still out on what the different flavorings emit. And now it’s clear that vaping is especially risky for a fetus if a pregnant woman is using nicotine-laced e-cigs or even no-nicotine e-cigs.

A recent study found that when a zebrafish fetus is exposed to e-cigarettes, the result is severe heart malformation. Another study found that mice fetuses reacted to the nicotine with a reduction of neurodevelopmental gene expression in the frontal cortex (brain damage). Yet another study says that frog fetuses showed signs of facial (cartilage and muscle) defects after e-cigarette exposure. And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that any product containing nicotine is not safe to use during pregnancy and can damage a developing (human) fetus’s brain and lungs.

So if you’re pregnant, quit vaping (and smoking). For help, check out, “What you need to know about e-cigarettes” at doctoroz.com and Dr. Roizen’s quit tips at Sharecare.com.

Email questions for Mehmet Oz and Mike Roizen to youdocsdaily@ sharecare.com.