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. 2025 Feb 1;464(Pt 3):141897.
doi: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2024.141897. Epub 2024 Nov 1.

Comprehensive toxicological multi-year study on pesticides in apples: Control, trends and dietary risk assessment

Bożena Łozowicka  1 , Piotr Kaczyński  2 , Elżbieta Wołejko  3 , Magdalena Jankowska  4 , Piotr Iwaniuk  5 , Izabela Hrynko  6 , Ewa Rutkowska  7 , Stanisław Łuniewski  8 , Gulzhakhan Ilyasova  9 , Agata Jabłońska-Trypuć  10 , Urszula Wydro  11 , Marta Pietruszyńska  12
Affiliations

Comprehensive toxicological multi-year study on pesticides in apples: Control, trends and dietary risk assessment

Bożena Łozowicka et al. Food Chem. .

Abstract

Apples are one of the most widely consumed raw fruit worldwide. Due to multiple sprayings during the growing season, they can contain pesticide residues affecting quality of food and human health. The novelty of the present study was a comprehensive multi-year control of a broad spectrum of pesticides in apples (2006-2022) and dietary risk assessment with changing toxicological values: ADI/ARfD/MRL. Long/short-term exposure for the EU critical sub-populations were calculated by EFSA model. A 17-year monitoring indicated 64.2 % of 1223 samples contained residues and MRL exceedances 3.4 %. A total of 57 active substances were identified (0.01-0.34 mg/kg). The most frequently detected were fungicides (captan, dithiocarbamates) and insecticides (acetamiprid, metoxyfenozide). Chronic exposure showed residues pose no risk to human health. Acute risk up to 840.7 % ARfD children and up to 219 % of ARfD for adults for indoxacarb and lambda-cyhalothrin was observed. Comprehensive toxicological data identified potential dietary risk to public health.

Keywords: Apples; Public health; Risk assessment; Toxic pesticides, dietary exposure.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: equipment, drugs, or supplies was provided by Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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