memes

We are talking about washing lettuce, prior to it becoming a salad.

At a minimum rinse all fresh produce under tap water for at least thirty seconds.

The mechanical action of rubbing the produce under tap water is likely responsible for removing pesticide residues.

Personally I wouldn't call mechanical action of rubbing to be rinsing. I would have liked to see the % removed, but skimming that article I didn't see. Also in my experience people don't rub for 30 literal seconds, the people I watch are lucky to break 5 seconds.

But the main point I want to make is that baking soda is a base that breaks down the pesticide.

Liang [4] studied the removal of five organophosphorus pesticides in raw cucumber with home preparation, and the research results show that washing by tap water for 20 min only caused a pesticides reduction of 26.7–62.9%. Sodium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate solution caused a pesticides reduction of 66.7–98.9%.

The removal efficiency of other washing solutions outperformed the tap water; tap water washing only caused a 10–40% loss of the 10 pesticides, and the AlEW, micron calcium, and active oxygen solution caused a 40–90% loss of the 10 pesticides.

AIEW being alkaline electrolyzed water, which I understand to be baking soda.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6388112

Except most of them do - https://portal.ct.gov/caes/fact-sheets/analytical-chemistry/removal-of-trace-pesticide-residues-from-produce