Simultaneous determination of five organophosphorus pesticide residues in different food samples by solid-phase microextraction fibers coupled with high-performance liquid chromatography.

Background: Excessive or improper use of organophosphorus pesticides (OPPs) may adversely affect human health through the food chain. In the present study, a simple, rapid and effective analytical method was successfully established and used for the determination of OPPs quinalphos and its analogs in different food samples.

Results: Under the optimized experimental conditions, five OPPs (quinalphos, triazophos, parathion, fenthion and chlorpyrifos-methyl) exhibit a good linearity within a range of 0.02 to 2.0 μg mL . The detection limit range was 3.0 to 10.0 μg L (signal-to-noise ratio = 3). The method was successfully used to detect and quantify the residues of quinalphos and its analogs in tomato, cabbage, barley and water samples; all spiked samples gave satisfactory recovery rates for the target analytes of between 82% and 98%, with a relative SD of 3.6% to 7.8%.

Conclusion: The results obtained show that the proposed method is an accurate, rapid and reliable sample pre-treatment method with respect to giving a good enrichment factor and detection limit for determining quinalphos pesticide residues in different food samples. © 2019 Society of Chemical Industry.