Residues of organic contaminants in beeswax

Abstract

Residues of organic contaminants in beeswaxResidues of the varroacides amitraz, chlordimeform, chlorfenvinphos, bromopropylate, coumaphos, tetradifon, acrinathrin, and fluvalinate, the organic microcontaminants 4,4'-DDE, 4,4'-TDE, PCB 153 and PCB 180, and the lipophilic pesticides lindane, chlorpyrifos and endosulfan have been determined by GC/MS in 52 beeswax samples. Recoveries on spiked samples ranged from 93 to 108% and determination limits varied from 4 to 65 mg/kg. Lindane (0.042-0.29 mg/kg), chlorfenvinphos (0.16-7.62 mg/kg), 4,4'-TDE (0.20 mg/kg), bromopropylate (0.041-0.12 mg/ kg), tetradifon (0.032-0.58 mg/kg), acrinathrin (0.058-0.59 mg/kg), coumaphos (0.27-0.38 mg/kg), fluvalinate (0.064-5.10 mg/kg), endosulfan sulfate (0.12-0.37 mg/kg) and 3-phenoxybenzaldehyde, a degradation product of fluvalinate and acrinathrin (0.080-1.47 mg/kg), were the compounds detected in beeswax. Foundation beeswax sheets contained higher contaminant concentrations and a greater diversity of compounds in relation to comb beeswaxes. Repeated melting in boiling water of purified beeswax spiked with the contaminants did not substantially modify the content of most of the contaminants in beeswax, except for amitraz and chlordimeform, showing that the contaminants are stable and remain practically unchanged in the purified beeswax.

Pesticide Residues in Natural Products with Pharmaceutical Use: Occurrence, Analytical Advances and Perspectives

“…Even in a less extent, studies reporting the occurrence of several lipophilic pesticides from environmental pollution in beeswax were established. Not only acaricide contamination occurs, residues of the OC lindane, and the OCs metabolites p,p'-TDE, endosulfan sulphate and 3-phenoxybenzaldehide were found in beeswax from Spanish beehives (Jiménez et al, 2005). A wide variety of residues of OPs, synthetic pyrethroids and dicarboximide fungicides (procymidone and vinclozolin) were also detected in beeswax from France (Chauzat & Faucon 2007).…”

“…Subsequent clean-up using sorbent based techniques such as column chromatography and SPE was required for GC determination. L-L partitioning between a polar phase such as methanol or acetonitrile (MeCN) and n-hexane was reported as a preliminary clean-up in the determination of variety of lipophilic pesticides from beeswax (Jiménez et al, 2005, Jiménez et al, 2004a, Jiménez et al, 2004b. Likewise, L-L was proposed as the first clean-up stage in order to remove most waxes for the residue determination of 17 OCs in raw propolis (Chen et al, 2009).…”

“…EI-GC-(Q)MS working in the SIM mode was employed in the determination of 12 GC-amenable pesticide residues in lemon essential oil (Barrek et al 2003). Regarding bee's byproducts, Jiménez et al (2005) and Santana dos Santos et al (2008) have determined by GC-MS pesticide residues in beeswax and raw propolis, respectively. Significant attention in large scale methods using GC-(SIM)MS was recently described for the target trace analysis of 54 (Miao el al., 2010), 81 (Zhou et al, 2011), 102 (Huang et al, 2007), 108 , 168 , 170 (Hayward & Wong, 2009), 195 (Wang et al, 2011 and 234 (Nguyen et al, 2010) pesticides in plant matrices with medicinal use.…”

Pesticide Residues in Bee Products

“…Wax is the beehive product more likely to be contaminated by organochlorine insecticides because of its strong lipophilic character. Moreover, OCPs were proved to remain stable during the conversion of old combs into new (Jimenez et al, 2005). The problem is magnified by the import of wax from continents where the use of chlorinated hydrocarbons is still permitted like Asia and Africa.…”

Fluorescence Determination of the Pesticide Asulam by Flow Injection Analysis

“…The vast majority of methods have been separation procedures, such as chromatographic, electrophoresis or a combination of both, and have been provided with spectrophotometric detection (most of the reported methods), fluorometric or electrochemical. Into the chromatographic field can be found many articles concerning thin layer 4,5 as gas chromatography 6 or a relatively large number of procedures concerning liquid chromatography [7][8][9][10][11][12] on certain occasions coupled with solid-phase extraction. [13][14][15][16] Capillary electrophoresis has been applied to Asulam determination by simultaneous spectrophotometric and electrochemical detection.…”