We’ve gone through rounds of working out if the leafy vegetables absorb the heavy metals or if it’s mostly in the dust and last I read we’re back to the latter.
White vinegar is better at cleaning vegetables than so called vegetable soaps, and more importantly the acid dissolves soot and heavy metals.
Gallon bottles of white vinegar are cheap. It’s also good for laundry especially if you have hard water, or a humid climate. Some people put it in the rinse cycle for their dishwasher as well, instead of rinse aid which is hell on your intestines.
> We’ve gone through rounds of working out if the leafy vegetables absorb the heavy metals or if it’s mostly in the dust and last I read we’re back to the latter.
It depends. For leafy vegetables it makes sense that dust > soil. However we find more lead and antimony in corn grown in proximity to highways.. this is clearly from road runoff taken up by the plant through the soil . We also find arsenic in brown rice and other crops again taken up through the soil because these soils are heavily contaminated from past arsenic-bearing pesticide use
But, dust/ topicals also matter. There is a reason fruits with thick skins like avocados, pineapple, melon, kiwi, always find themselves on the "Clean 15" list every year- because they are testing the flesh of the fruit, which is protected from topical pesticides by the skins. But I eat the kiwi skins sometimes...or make tea with the pineapple rinds... which people usually don't... and am guessing that they are a lot worse than the flesh.
Also read you can remove around 60% of the arsenic in rice by washing it before cooking, which you’re supposed to do anyway. (But I no longer save the water for things like putting into the compost pile).
White vinegar is better at cleaning vegetables than so called vegetable soaps, and more importantly the acid dissolves soot and heavy metals.
Gallon bottles of white vinegar are cheap. It’s also good for laundry especially if you have hard water, or a humid climate. Some people put it in the rinse cycle for their dishwasher as well, instead of rinse aid which is hell on your intestines.