Can Apples Poison Our Birds?

After scientists recently revealed that washing apples with water and even commercial bleach, does not remove all traces of the pesticides they have been sprayed with, ROSEMARY LOW decided to do her own investigation to see if these findings could mean our birds are at risk.

DIET

IT IS often recommended that we wash fruit and vegetables before we offer them to our birds in order to remove any traces of pesticides. In general this is good advice but, according to scientists at the University of Massachusetts, this is not effective in the case of apples. Their findings, as published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, attracted some attention in the press during the past few months (visit: www.acs.org and search for “Effectiveness of Commercial and Homemade Washing Agents in Removing Pesticide Residues on and in Apples”).

They carried out tests, using different methods, to try to remove two common pesticides from gala apples. One was the fungicide thiabendazole and the other was the insecticide phosmet. Washing the apples with tap water did not remove the chemicals that had penetrated the skin. The commercial bleach Clorox had only limited effectiveness. Results were better when using a mixture of 1 per cent bicarbonate of soda (baking powder). All cleaning methods removed pesticides from the surface, but the chemicals had penetrated into the flesh of the apples.

After the apples were immersed in this solution for 12-15 minutes, 80 per cent of the thiabendazole and 96 per cent of the phosmet were removed.