Three-Year Monitoring of Pesticide Residues in Croatian Olive Oils: Occurrence, Regulatory Screening, and Acute Dietary Exposure

Monitoring pesticide residues in olive oil is important for food-safety surveillance, but interpretation requires a clear distinction between analytical detections, regulatory screening, and health-risk assessment. This study examined 200 olive-oil samples obtained directly from consenting producers in six Croatian coastal counties during 2019–2021 using GC-MS/MS and LC-MS/MS multiresidue methods. The sampling was non-probability-based and the commercial category of the oils was not independently verified. Thirty-three residue detections were recorded in 23 unique samples (11.5% of all samples); eight samples contained more than one detected pesticide. Phosmet was the most frequently detected compound (16 detections) and remained below the study-specific MRL screening benchmark. Chlorpyrifos was detected in three samples and boscalid in three samples at concentrations above the corresponding unprocessed-commodity MRL benchmarks when a processing factor of 1 was applied. Deterministic acute exposure was calculated independently using EFSA PRIMo revision 3.1 consumption inputs for “olives for oil production”. For pesticides with an established acute reference dose (ARfD), the highest estimate was observed for phosmet and reached 10.87% ARfD in adults and 17.93% ARfD in children. No quantitative %ARfD conclusion was possible for chlorpyrifos because EFSA could not establish a health-based guidance value following concerns regarding genotoxicity and developmental neurotoxicity. Co-occurrence within EFSA cumulative assessment groups was therefore treated as a preliminary screening exercise rather than a cumulative risk estimate. These findings support continued targeted surveillance; however, they do not establish national representativeness, legal non-compliance of processed oil, or the environmental sustainability of production practices.