Behavior of pesticides and their metabolites in traditional Chinese medicine Paeoniae Radix Alba during processing and associated health risk

Abstract

In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), crude herbs are processed to obtain the medicinal parts of the plant, from which extracts are prepared for people to take as medicine. However, there is no report on the pesticide residual behavior in Chinese medicines during processing at present, and thus, a systematic study of the effects of different processing factors (PF) on pesticide removal in Chinese medicines and the associated risk of dietary exposure is urgently needed. This study main investigated the dissipation and metabolism of pesticides in Chinese medicine Paeoniae Radix Alba during processing, and the calculated pesticide PFs were also used to assess the risk of dietary exposure. For analyze samples, a simple and high-throughput multiresidue pesticide analysis method was developed and validated for pesticides and their metabolites in P. Radix. based on QuEChERS procedure combined with HPLC-MS/MS. Recoveries at three concentration levels were within 61.37%–117.82% with an associated precision RSD < 15% indicating satisfactory accuracy. TCM processing could be useful for the partial removal of several pesticide residues, with removal rate reaching 98%. The polarity is the dominant variable, which with a high contribution was the effectiveness of the treatment and the concentration factors for pesticides. The hazard quotients of all pesticides were much lower than the safety level, indicating low risk of dietary exposure. Results are of great theoretical and practical value for the scientific evaluation of the safety of Chinese medicines, improvement of the quality and safety level of Chinese medicine.