ABSTRACT
Pesticide residues in food are a growing concern, both for consumers and for legislation. They comprise the deposits of pesticide active ingredients and their metabolites or breakdown products present in some component of the environment after their application, spillage, or dumping. Pesticides must undergo extensive efcacy, environmental, and toxicological testing to be registered by governments for legal use in specied applications. The applied chemicals and/or their degradation products may remain as residues in agricultural products, which become a concern for human exposure. Among the public, but also among experts, the perception of risks related to pesticide presence in food is quite high. As reported by Grob et al. [1], if you ask educated consumers about the principal source of food contamination they will list pesticides as the rst item. This is understandable, since pesticides are used worldwide on a broad variety of crops to control pests and prevent diseases in order to increase agricultural production, improve the quality, and extend the storage life of food crops [2]. Thus, the monitoring of pesticide residues in food is nowadays a priority objective in order to get extensive evaluation of food quality and to avoid possible risks to human health. For instance, in Europe, the European Union (EU) operates a country-by-country monitoring program that oversees the quality of imported food products [3]. In addition, the setting of low EU-harmonized maximum residue levels (MRLs) for unregistered pesticide/sample combinations and the introduction of
2.1 Introduction .................................................................................................... 17 2.2 Sample Treatment ........................................................................................... 19 2.3 UHPLC-MS(/MS) Methods ...........................................................................22
