Do grocery stores mist produce with pesticides?
My friend, Eugene Trufkin, recently sent me a photo of an antimicrobial pesticide called ProduceMaxx above the produce section in Sprouts. Produce Maxx contains the active ingredient hypochlorous acid and is produced by Chemistar Corp., which was acquired by Ecolab in 2019. Ecolab's largest shareholder at around 21% is none other than Bill Gates. Produce Maxx is diluted in water and used in misters or sinks for a number of whole and cut produce items that you can see here listed on the screen. The pesticide is approved for conventional and organic produce to kill E coli, salmonella, and listeria. As I mentioned, the active ingredient in Produce Maxx is hypochlorous acid which forms up to 6,000 parts per million of free available chlorine in the whole bottle. Our bodies produce small amounts of hypochlorous acid, and I couldn't find any information on whether it is or isn't safe to ingest in trace amounts. ProduceMaxx is supposed to be diluted in water so that there's 30 to 60 parts per million of free available chlorine in produce treatment sinks and misters. It appears that the grocery store employees are responsible for getting this concentration correct by using testing strips. It is unclear what residents remain on produce as it doesn't have to be washed off according to the instructions in the EPA approval letter. It's reasonable to assume that it would only be a fraction of the 30 to 60 parts per million since that concentration is used across all of the produce. What we don't know is how often these misters run and how much of this accumulates on the produce.
