<br/>All over the world pesticides are studied to better understand their toxicity and risks that come with ingestion of contaminated produce. Today’s society teaches people to think of pesticides as carcinogenic chemicals that are detrimental to our health, when in most cases their amount of detection is below the USDA’s detection violation rates. While pesticides may or may not be detrimental to our health at certain exposure levels, it is important to understand the chemistry behind pesticides, especially those found in fruits, and the methods used to extract, separate, and detect them. The goals of this experiment are to (1) learn different ways of extracting pesticides in fruits, and (2) provide a basic understanding of the use of gas chromatography with mass spectrometric (GCMS) detection for the separation and identification of selected pesticides in fruits. Two common methods for extracting pesticides in fruits, liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) and solid phase extraction (SPE), will be used to extract pesticides from selected fruits, both local and imported. The pesticides in the extract will be separated and identified using selective ion monitoring on a GCMS. Standard solutions of selected pesticides will also be analyzed on the GCMS as reference materials for identification of pesticides in the extracts. Finally, the results from local fruits will be compared with imported fruits to see if there is any difference between the type of pesticides used in those produce.<br/>

Extraction of pesticides in local and imported fruits followed by GCMS analysis

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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