Residues of 18 organochlorine pesticides in 30 traditional Chinese medicines
Introduction
Organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) were widely used in agriculture in the past. The use of most OCPs is now prohibited, but their low biodegradability means that they can still be detected in the environment (Barriada and Concha, 2003). Because many traditional Chinese medicines (TCM) are plant materials or plant extracts, they have a risk of contamination from agricultural chemicals, such as OCPs (Ling et al., 1999, Hajslova et al., 1999). The objective of this study was to investigate residual concentrations of OCPs in TCMs. We aimed to determine which products were contaminated with OCPs, to determine the concentration and distribution of contaminants among TCM products, and to evaluate the implications for public health risks.
Section snippets
Instruments
The following instruments were used in preparation and analysis of the samples: an Agilent 5890N gas chromatograph (Palo Alto, CA, USA) equipped with a 63Ni electron-capture detector (ECD) and a fused-silica capillary column DB-1701 (30 m × 0.32 mm i.d., film thickness 0.25 μm, Agilent, USA), an ultrasonic bath (TP-150, 50 Hz, 220 V, TianPeng, China), and a rotary vacuum evaporator (NE-1, Eyela, Japan). Glassware was washed with distilled water followed by pure acetone, then baked at 120 °C for 12 h.
Reagents
All
Results and discussion
Among the 280 samples of 30 different TCMs, 75.8% contained at least one of the 18 pesticides (Table 2). The pesticides detected were tecnazene, hexachlorobenzene, PCNB, heptachlor, aldrin, α-BHC, β-BHC, γ-BHC, δ-BHC, p,p′-DDE, o,p′-DDT, p,p′-DDD p,p′-DDT. Two pesticides were found in more than 50% of samples; α-BHC (55.8%) and PCNB (55.8%). Hexachlorobenzene was found in 40.9% of samples, tecnazene in 19.5%, γ-BHC in 16.7%, and p,p′-DDE in 16.0%. β-BHC, δ-BHC, heptachlor, aldrin, o,p′-DDT, p,p
Conclusion
Although OCPS were detected in most samples, their concentrations were found well below the MRLs set in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia. Only nine pesticides (α-BHC, γ-BHC, β-BHC, δ-BHC p,p′-DDE, o,p′-DDT, p,p′-DDD, p,p′-DDT, and PCNB) have maximum residue limits (MRLs) listed for Radix astragali and Radix glycyrrhizae in China’s Pharmacopoeia (China Pharmacopoeia Committee, 2005). Hexachlorobenzene was detected in 40.9% of samples tested, and tecnazene in 19.5%; these were the most frequently
Acknowledgement
Financial support by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China under Grant 2001BA701A57 is gratefully acknowledged.
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2016, Journal of Chromatography B: Analytical Technologies in the Biomedical and Life SciencesCitation Excerpt :OCPs are soluble in most organic solvent. In previous reports, OCPs extracted mainly using n-hexane, ethyl acetate, acetone, and dichloromethane [5,7,11,18–20]. It was evident that n-hexane is a non polar solvent, showed good properties for the extraction of the majority of the selected OCPs, but exhibited low extraction efficiency for some polar pesticides, such as heptachlor, p,p’-DDT and endosulfan sulfate.