Residue Levels and Chronic Dietary Intake Risk of Pesticide Residues in Fruits and Vegetables in Chengdu

Abstract

To investigate the pesticide residues in fruits and vegetables and their dietary risk to Chengdu residents. A total of 203 samples of 9 kinds of fruits and vegetables were collected from large farmer markets and supermarkets in Chengdu. The modified GB 23200.113-2018 QuEChERS pre-treatment method combined with gas chromatography-triple quadrupole-tandem mass spectrometry method was used to analyze 48 pesticides. Chronic dietary intake risk was assessed by a combination of fruit and vegetable consumption of residents in big cities and the food safety index method. It showed good linear relationships for 48 pesticides in the range of 0.025~25 μg/kg, with the correlation coefficients higher than 0.99. The average recoveries of the pesticides were 60.1%~117.7%, with relative standard deviations less than 10%. The limits of quantification were 0.083~3.3 μg/kg. This method could meet the requirements for trace determination of the 48 pesticides in fruits and vegetables. The detection rate of pesticide residues in 203 fruit and vegetable samples was 50.2%. Six pesticides were detected in all the samples, and all of them did not exceed the maximum residue limits. The detection rate of pyraclostrobin was the highest, being 29.1%. Various kinds of fruits and vegetables were polluted differently by pesticides. Berries and other small kinds of fruits, represented by strawberries, had the highest detection rate up to 91.7%. The results of chronic dietary exposure assessment showed that the food safety index values of all detected pesticides ranged from 0.00002 to 0.004, much less than 1. But the daily intake of propargite was relatively high (0.00257 mg/d), which should be paid more attention in the future.

Keywords

• quechers
• gas chromatography-triple quadrupole-tandem mass spectrometry
• pesticide residues
• dietary exposure assessment
• food safety index