I eat at least 10 bananas a week. They probably use as much pesticide on bananas as any other commercial crop. I wonder if the pesticide comes off with the peel. Do peeled fruits like bananas and oranges contain less pesticide?
I’m not sure, but I believe they’re safe. I’ve seen warnings about contracting typhus or other communicable diseases (in countries where it’s still common) that say “Do not consume fruit from street vendors unless you peel it yourself.” I assume that if the peel protects the fruit from bacteria it protects from pesticides too. But I could be wrong, so don’t soak that banana in Diazinon and then chow down just yet.
Minor nit: I think you mean typhoid, not typhus. Typhoid fever is a virulent form of food poisoning caused by a type of salmonella bacteria. Typhus is a completely different disease (or class of diseases) caused by rickettsial bacteria and spread by ticks, fleas and lice carried by rodents. Some forms of typhus cause gastrointestinal symptoms, but typhus is not caused by ingesting tainted food.
You’re right. Funnily enough, I just read about typhoid and typhus a month or so ago while trying to answer a question for my wife (we saw the reports that Osama bin Laden might have died of typhoid fever, and we started discussing the old Oregon Trail game we played in elementary school on Apple II machines, and she wondered what exactly “typhoid fever” was, since it frequently killed her family members in the game), which is when I read the guidelines about not eating fruit that you didn’t pick or peel yourself … and I was quite clear on the distinction between typhus and typhoid fever then. But when I posted this I couldn’t remember, and I just took a guess instead of looking it up. Thanks for the correction.
I’m not aware of any studies that indicate the presence of pesticides anywhere other than on the surface of fruit. I always wash all fruit (even bananas) as soon as I get it home from the market. After all, you handle the skin even if you don’t eat it and you could be transferring residues from the skin to your hands and then to whatever you’re eating.