Pesticide identification and quantification in honey produced and marketed in Rio de Janeiro Brazil by the UPLC MSMS technique

Honey is a food product that will be collected, treated, packaged, and distributed by the market, local or international, and it is subject to regulations by authorities that take care of safety in favor of the health of the population. Among the various chemical hazards that may be present in honey and eventually constitute a risk to human health, pesticides occupy a prominent place. Thats why this work aimed to adapt, validate, and use QuEChERS extraction with a clean-up step followed by UPLC-MS/MS detection for multiresidual determination of 324 pesticides in samples of honey produced and sold in the state of Rio de Janeiro. As a result, the method was quantitatively validated for 239 pesticides with a quantification limit of 0.02 mg kg^-1 with 22 different pesticides detected in 23 samples, from 17 municipalities, representing 35% of total samples. Meanwhile, only Mephospholam and Propamocarb were quantified at a concentration of 0.02 mg kg^-1, with Mephospholam not complying with the MRL stipulated by the European Union.