Pesticide residues in Lebanese apples and health risk assessment

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

In Lebanon, apples are among the most consumed commodities; however, pesticide residues in apples have not been evaluated so far. Therefore, this study presents the occurrence of pesticide residues in apples produced in Lebanon during 2012-2016. A total of 212 samples were analysed for the presence of pesticides using the QuEChERS multi-residue extraction method, followed by GC-MS. Pesticide residues were not observed in 23% of the samples. Whereas pesticide residues were found in 77% of the samples, among them 61% exceeded the maximum residue limits (MRL) and 16% contained residues below the MRL. The most frequently detected pesticide residues were chlorpyrifos (n = 142), methidathion (n = 34), cypermethrin (n = 21), lambda-cyhalothrin (n = 16), myclobutanil (n = 13) and diazinon (n = 9). A preliminary long-term exposure assessment for the detected pesticides in apples showed that Hazard Quotient (HQ) was in the range of 0.1-8% of the ADI's, indicating no risk to human health.