Analysis of pesticide residues using the Quick Easy Cheap Effective Rugged and Safe (QuEChERS) pesticide multiresidue method in traditional Chinese medicine by gas chromatography with electron capture detection

The Quick Easy Cheap Effective Rugged and Safe multiresidue method (QuEChERS) has been validated for the extraction of 15 organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) in completely different matrices of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). The method employed a rapid, simple and cost-effective procedure. The spiking levels for the recovery experiments were 0.1, 0.5 and 2.0 mg kg⁻¹. Mean recoveries mostly ranged between 76.0% and 114.0% (96.0% on average), and relative standard deviations (RSD) were generally below 10% (4.72% on average). Based on these results, the methodology has been proven to be highly efficient and robust and thus suitable for monitoring the MRL compliance of a wide range of commodity. The contamination status of 15 OCPs on 80 different TCMs marketed in China, and a total of 400 samples were also performed using a previously validated method. 15 OCPs were benzene hexachloride (BHC, including α-BHC, β-BHC, γ-BHC, δ-BHC), hexachlorobenzene, heptachlor, heptachlor epoxide, aldrin, p, p′-DDE, p, p′-DDD, o, p′-DDT, p, p′-DDT, mirex, endrin, dieldrin. This study indicates that the proposed method is useful for analyzing OCPs in TCM.