Assessment of pesticide residues in the highly consumable vegetable samples grown in Oman

Pesticides have significant adverse effects on human health such as carcinogenesis, immunotoxicity, birth defects, neurological toxicity, and endocrine disruption. Therefore, it is very important to monitor pesticides in fruits and vegetables and to assess if they cause a risk to human health. The present study is to isolate and detect the content of pesticides residue in the locally grown vegetables by using sensitive liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC–MS). Four vegetable samples were collected from local farms of Salalah and Al Sharqiyah and were cleaned and chopped. The chopped sample of each vegetable sample was taken in a heavy-duty tube and then mixed with ethyl acetate, magnesium sulfate, and sodium sulfate. The extracts were evaporated and injected into the LC–MS injector. A total of 382 pesticides were analyzed by using the same. The results showed that all the collected samples from Salalah and Al Sharqiyah contained pesticides from the concentration range of 0.011 to 0.595 mg/kg. The range of pesticides concentrations of vegetables collected from Salalah was 0.011 to 0.099 mg/kg, and the range of Al Sharqiyah’s vegetables was 0.011 to 0.595 mg/kg. Among the collected vegetables, the highest content of acetamiprid pesticide was in lettuce and the lowest content of acetamiprid pesticide was in cucumber and the lowest to highest order was cucumber > tomato > eggplants > lettuce. In conclusion, the concentration of pesticides in all vegetable samples were within the permissible limit. Therefore, the results of this study showed that the detected pesticides were not exposed to potential health risks through the consumption of fruits and vegetables.