Development and validation of multi-residue method for determination of 412 pesticide residues in cotton fiber using GC-MS/MS and LC-MS/MS

Abstract

The new global concept is to care about textiles and clothes safety to improve the protection of the human health and the environment from the harmful pesticide residues. Very few articles have been published for determination of several pesticide classes in cotton fibers in one multi-residue method. A simple, efficient, sensitive, accurate, and reliable multi-residue method was developed for the determination of 412 residual pesticides in cotton fibers using modified QuEChERS method with Liquid and Gas Chromatography coupled to Triple Quadrupole Mass Spectrometer (LC-MS/MS & GC-MS/MS) for qualitative and quantitative analysis according to the international standards concepts. The developed method covered several pesticide classes, including 43 carbamates, 16 pyrethroids, 27 organochlorines (OCs), 54 organophosphorus (Ops), 31 urea derivatives, 7 Polychlorinated biphenyl (PCBs), 6 Neonicotinoid, and 228 other pesticides. Most of the target pesticides were listed in Oeko-Tex Standards, the EU Ecolabel for textile products, and the Egyptian recommendations of the Agricultural Pesticide Committee (APC-Egypt). The method optimization and validation were carried out according to the EU guidelines. The results were shown to be reliable where the corresponding average recoveries within the acceptable range of 70–120%; the relative standard deviations were less than 20%. The limit of quantitation (LOQ) of this method is 0.01 mg kg⁻¹ all pesticides except for 3 GC-compounds and 19 LC-compounds which have LOQ of 0.05 mg kg⁻¹.

Keywords:

• Cotton
• pesticide residues
• Oeko-Tex
• QuEChERS
• GC-MS/MS
• LC-MS/MS

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Dr. Moustapha N. Mohammed and Dr. Abir El-Gohary for optimization of GC-MS/MS parameters and Dr. Mohamed E. Amer for optimization of LC-MS/MS parameters. The authors would like to thank Dr. Osama El-Sayed Hussein for assisting in LC/MS/MS results evaluation. The authors would like to thank Dr. Sherif M. Taha for assisting in GC/MS/MS results evaluation.