Pesticides Contamination of Cereals and Legumes: Monitoring of Samples Marketed in Italy as a Contribution to Risk Assessment

The evaluation of cereal-based product contamination by pesticide residues is a topic of worldwide importance, and reliable analytical methods for official check analyses and monitoring studies are required for multi-residue analysis at trace levels. In this work, a validated multi-residual analytical method by gas-chromatography and tandem mass spectrometry coupled with a rapid QuEChERS procedure was used for the determination of 37 pesticides (pyrethroids, organophosphorus and organochlorine compounds) in 209 commercially available samples of cereals and 11 legumes, placed on the Italian market in 2018 and 2019, coming from different regions of Italy, eastern Europe, and some non-European countries. No pesticide traces were observed in the analyzed legume samples. A total of 18 cereal samples were found to be contaminated by at least one pesticide, with a concentration level higher than the corresponding quantification limit, but never exceeding the maximum level fixed in the European Regulations. This work is the first part of a surveillance study for pesticide control in food samples.