Effects of the processing steps on parathion levels during honey production and parathion removal by macroporous adsorption resins
Highlights
► We studied the effects of processing steps in honey production on parathion levels. ► We screened four macroporous adsorption resins for removing parathion from honey. ► LS-803 resin was selected as the optimal resin for removing parathion from honey.
Introduction
Parathion (O, O-diethyl-O-4-nitro-phenyl thiophosphate) is one of the most widely applied organophosphorus (OPs) insecticides in agriculture (Wu & Linden, 2008). Parathion is of great public health concern because it is associated with acute toxicity to mammals through the inhibition of the enzyme acetylcholinesterase (AChE) in the nervous system (Pope, Karanth, & Liu, 2005). In addition, the previous studies showed that a long-term exposure to parathion would even cause environmental deterioration (Ghauch, Rima, Amine, & Martin-Bouyer, 1999), ecological threats (Rodriguez et al., 2006, Roque et al., 2005, Sarkar et al., 2007, Sultatos, 1986), as well as adverse health effects upon the public (Muttray et al., 2005, Slotkin et al., 2009). Thus, parathion has been banned in many developed countries like the USA (US EPA, 2000). However, the use of parathion continues in many developing countries including China, where the application of parathion is still legal for crops other than vegetables, fruits, teas or herbal medicines (Agriculture Ministry, China, 2007).
Honey is a natural, nutritious and healthy food produced by honeybees from nectar of plants or honeydew. It is susceptible to environmental factors such as air, water, soil and plants that honeybees can contact directly. Obviously, the unobservant and extensive usage of OPs in agricultural practice can mainly conduce to pesticides contamination carried out by bees’ pollination (Bozena, 2002, Otero et al., 2007, Rissaton et al., 2007). During honey processing, raw honey can be usually processed through several unit treatments such as washing, heating, concentrating and filtering. These unit steps are important factors that lead to reduction of pesticide residues (Uygun, Senoz, Öztürk, & Koksel, 2009). Despite the fact that the effects of food processing on pesticide residues have been extensively reviewed by researchers (Uygun et al., 2008, Uygun et al., 2009, Zhu et al., 2010), there exist the limited investigations in to the persistence of parathion as residues in honey. Thus, it is important to evaluate the effects of honey processing on parathion to determine whether the insecticide level can be managed through the post-harvest procedures. Information on the parathion persistence during processing will be useful for the development of an effective food safety program for honey.
Generally, the contaminated honey should be disused if the residue levels of pesticides exceed the maximum residue limits (MRLs). Yet this way may cause a large amount of wastes which remain lots of beneficial substances underutilized. As the pesticide residues in honey are reduced to the level below MRLs, the unqualified honey can be reused as a sweetener in food industry. Therefore, in order to reduce parathion in honey, it is necessary to establish reliable, efficient and economical methods that fit the requirement of production. Some researchers had previously reported several methods to reduce parathion by ultrasonic degradation, ozonedegradation and photodegradation (Doong and Chang, 1998, Nowakowska et al., 2004, Yao et al., 2010). However, these methods may have such disadvantages as high production cost and more toxic transformation products or metabolites, which are not suitable for large-scale industrial production. Accordingly, the use of MARs for removing parathion from honey shows such various superior aspects as low cost, simple operation, high efficiency, free pollution and easy regeneration (Liu, Liu, Chen, Liu, & Di, 2010).
The objectives of the study were (1) to investigate the effects of different processing steps including preheating, filtration, vacuum concentration and pasteurization on parathion residue levels and (2) to evaluate the parathion adsorption abilities of four types of MARs and to select the optimal MARs for removing parathion from honey.
Section snippets
Chemicals
Parathion standard (>99.5% pure) was purchased from Dr. Ehrenstorfer (Augsburg, Germany). Ethyl acetate, acetone and sodium chloride were analytical grade and purchased from Tianjin Reagent Co. Ltd. (Tianjin, China). Acetone was redistilled before its use.
Adsorbents
Macroporous adsorption resins (MARs) including LS-903 and LS-803 were purchased from Xi’an Grancent Exchange and Adsorbent Material Ltd. (Shaanxi province, China), LSA-900B and LSA-21 were offered from Xi’an Sunresin Technology Co., Ltd.
Recovery experiments
The method used for parathion determination in this study was efficient. Recovery rates of parathion was obtained by spiking the honey with 0.5, 2, 5 mg/kg in triplicate ranging from 81% to 113% for parathion and the relative standard deviations (RSD) for repeatability ranging from 0.006 to 0.132. The limit of detection (LOD) was 0.05 mg/kg. Linearity was determined by analyzing seven calibration standards within the concentration ranging from 0.1 to 5 mg/kg (in acetone), and the correlation
Conclusions
The results of this study showed that during honey processing, vacuum concentration could contribute the most in the reduction of parathion level, followed by filtration processing, pasteurization and preheating. Meanwhile, the adsorption abilities of different types of MARs were estimated and the results showed that LS-803 resin had the highest adsorption ability for parathion adsorption when compared with other three resins LS-903, LSA-21 and LSA-900B. Consequently, LS-803 resin was selected
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