Pesticides contamination in Egyptian honey samples

Honey is a natural food and widely used for its nutritional and therapeutic properties. The occurrence of pesticides in honeybees causes a potential risk for consumers. In the current study, LC-MS/MS and GC/MS methods were optimized for analysis of 46 multiclass pesticides residues in honey samples. The effect of different extraction solvents and dispersive solid phase extraction (DSPE) purification on the analytical methods performance were investigated. Acetonitrile performed better than ethyl acetate in terms of method efficiency and decreasing of matrix effects, while DSPE was effective in reducing matrix effect. The analytical methods were validated according to European Commission guidelines, in terms of accuracy, repeatability, reproducibility, linearity, LOD and LOQ. The methods were applied to 52 honey samples collected from northern and southern governorates of Egypt. Detectable levels of penconazole, difenoconazole, metalaxyl and carbofuran residues were found, in the range of 3-30 A mu g/kg, in 14 % of the samples. These results indicate that the tested honey samples are safe for human consumption, taking into account the effect of environmental conditions of the honey's production region on the pesticides contamination levels.