evaluation of honey health from the perspective of pesticide residues

Introduction- honey is an outstanding wholesome natural product possessing excellent nutritional value, iran is among the countries having the highest number of beehives worldwide. according to global statistics, iran is the fourth largest honey producer in the world with an annual production of 76,000 tons. generally, honey bee and all its products such as pollen, wax, and particularly honey are potential natural indicators of environmental pollution, and might be regularly used for biomonitoring of contamination, since they provide miniature samplers (tette, 2016).material and methods- a multi-residue method was developed for 56 pesticides from different groups, encompassing the most widely used pesticides in iran. 64 samples of honey were randomly collected from different regions of iran and extraction was performed using validated quechers method. next, pesticide residues were identified and measured using optimized uhplc-ms/ms, gc-ecd and gc-ms analysis (eslami, 2021).findings- results indicated that the observed pesticides in honey samples were approximately 68% of the total studied pesticides, most of residues belonged to the group of insecticides. chlorpyrifos, clothianidine, cyromazin, primicarb, diazinon, ethofumesate, phosalone, coumaphos and lindane were the most frequently observed pesticides found in honey samples, exceeding eu mrls (0.01 mg/kg). eventually, the human health risk assessment was performed for children and adult consumers based on monte carlo simulation(mahdavi, 2022). results revealed that although pesticide residue levels were relatively high, the risk factor did not exceed the allowed limits and hence the consumption of iranian honey would not pose a threat to human health.conclusion- the rank order of pesticides based on hq was lindane>diazinon>chlorpyrifos> cyromazin>phosalone>clothianidine>pirimicarb>ethofumesate for honey samples. in our study, the calculated hazard index (hi) for adults (0.13) and for children (0.36) lower than 1, suggested no potential health risks to the honey consumers. all pesticides except for lindane did not pose a cancer risk to humans, unfortunately due to lindane residue as a pops pesticide, cr (2.47×10-5) was between 10-4 and 10-6, controlling plans should be conducted to decrease the concentration of this pesticide in iran.