Analysis of 52 pesticides in fresh fish muscle by QuEChERS extraction followed by LC-MS/MS determination

Abstract

Pesticide pollution in water has been well described; however, little is known on pesticide accumulation by aquatic organisms, and to date, most studies in this line have been focused on persistent organochlorine pesticides. For this reason, a method based on QuEChERS extraction and subsequent liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) has been developed and validated for the determination of 52 medium to highly polar pesticides in fresh fish muscle. Target pesticides were selected on the basis of use and occurrence in surface waters. Quantification is carried out following an isotope dilution approach. The method developed is satisfactory in terms of accuracy (relative recovery between 71-120%), precision (relative standard deviation below 20.6%) and sensitivity (limits of determination in the pg/g or low ng/g f.w. range for most compounds). The application of the validated methodology to fish specimens collected from the Adige River (Italy) revealed the presence of trace levels of diazinon, dichlorvos and diuron, and measurable levels of metolachlor, quinoxyfen, irgarol, terbutryn, and acetamiprid, but in all cases at concentrations below the default maximum residue level of 10 ng/g established for pesticides not specifically regulated in fish. Metolachlor and quinoxyfen were both the most ubiquitous and abundant pesticides, in agreement with their high potential of bioaccumulation. Both are toxic to aquatic organisms, and therefore, their potential effects on aquatic ecosystems should be further explored.

Urinary metabolites of organophosphate and pyrethroid pesticides in children from an Italian cohort (PHIME, Trieste)

“…Lately, these chemicals have been found in different matrices, including dietary products, water, outdoor and indoor air and house dust (Banerjee et al, 2012;Sousa et al, 2018;Coscollà et al, 2017;Gibbs et al, 2017;Mercier et al, 2011;Tang et al, 2018). In addition, recent studies have found them even in freshwater and edible fish (Arisekar et al, 2019;Barbieri et al, 2019;Pico et al, 2019), being in some cases related with pollution accidents, like the death fish episode by pyrethroid exposure in Northern Italy (Bille et al, 2017).…”

Hyphenated dispersive solid‐ and liquid‐phase microextraction technique based on a hydrophobic deep eutectic solvent: application for trace analysis of pesticides in fruit juices

“…Generally, the addition of salt leads to a decrease in the solubility of the analytes in the aqueous phase and enhances the extraction efficiencies. 8,31 In this study, by increasing the NaCl amount, the peaks areas were decreased. Hence, no salt was added in the subsequent experiments.…”

“…At a pH higher than 6, the peak areas decreased, due to the hydrolysis of the pesticides. 8 Therefore, the pH of the sample solution should not exceed 6. Considering that the pH values of the investigated fruit juice samples were below 6, 29 the experiments were carried out without pH adjustment.…”

“…7 Due to these small values, efficient sample preparation methods, accurate and sensitive detection, and determination techniques are of high importance. 8 So far, various sample preparation methods have been introduced for pesticide analysis. SPE, SPME, liquid-liquid extraction, and DLLME are the most common pesticide pretreatment techniques.…”

Bioremediation of chlorpyrifos and 3,5,6-trichloro-2-pyridinol (TCP) by a paddy field bacterial isolate: Insights from genome analysis for possible biodegradation pathway

“…Current agriculture has been studied continuously using organic pesticides to produce improved crop yields and food health (Aswathi et al, 2019). While pesticides play an important role in the growth of crops in modern agriculture, widespread use does significant harm to the environment (Barbieri et al, 2019). The use of organophosphorus pesticides (OPs) have triggered alarm over environmental pollution, food safety and contact toxicity.…”