Monitoring of pesticide residues in commercial agricultural products in the northern area of Seoul, Korea

This study was conducted to monitor 284 pesticides residue level in 2,914 commercial agricultural products in the northern area of Seoul in 2011 by the multi class pesticide multiresidue analysis methods in Korea Food Code using GC, HPLC, GC-MSD and, LC-MSD. The detection rate of pesticide residues were 14.8% (431/2,914). The order of agricultural products in which the pesticide residues were detected was perilla leaves 40.0% (28/70), chamnamul 35.5% (11/31), amaranth 30.0% (3/10) and spinach 27.7% (38/137) etc. The percentage of products that exceeded the MRLs (maximum residue limits) were 1.0% (31/431). Those products that exceeded MRLs were ginseng (6), perilla leaves (4), leek (4), welsh onion (3) and sedeum (3) etc. The 59 kinds of the pesticides were detected on this study, 21 pesticides of them were detected over MRLs. Detection rate of fungicides (56.4%) was higher than that of insecticides (42.1%). And procymidone was detected with considerable high frequency. Additionally, residual residual violates pesticides were in the order of tolclofos-methyl, endosulfan, dimethomorph, diniconazole and fludioxonil. According to the agricultural marketing channels, detection and excess rate of them were monitored. Detection and excess rate of samples circulated in agricultural traditional market were highest. The estimated daily intakes (EDI) of the pesticides were compared to personal acceptable daily intakes (PADI) in order to risk assessment by food consumption. Diazinon in Korean cabbage showed the highest %ADI, 2.9901 and others showed below 3.0 %ADI. Overall, these results indicate that residue levels of pesticides detected were evaluated as safe.