pdo replacing + with space

I am using Laravel 5 and am trying to insert an email with a + sign into a string field in the database.

Unfortunately the + is getting decoded to a space in the database. I traced the code and identified it to be pdo that is changing the value to a space.

The code looks like:

$bindings = $me->prepareBindings($bindings);
return $me->getPdo()->prepare($query)->execute($bindings);

I know that the plus sign is still in the bindings value before the execute statement.

My broad question is how can I avoid this with Laravel? Or more specifically how can I avoid it using pdo?

via Chebli Mohamed