Assessing children’s dietary pesticide exposure – direct measurement of pesticide residues in 24-hour duplicate food samples.

Background.
The data presented in this paper responded to calls for more direct measurements of pesticide residues in foods consumed by children and provided an opportunity to compare direct measures of pesticide residues in foods representing actual consumption to those reported by the USDA Pesticide Data Program.

Objective.
We measured pesticide residues in 24-hour duplicate food samples collected from a group of forty-six young children participating in the Children's Pesticide Exposure Study (CPES).

Methods.
Parents were instructed to collect 24-hr duplicate food samples of all conventional fruits, vegetables, and fruit juices equal to the quantity consumed by their children, similarly pre-washed/prepared, and from the same source or batch. Individual or composite food items were analyzed for organophosphates (OP) and pyrethroid insecticide residues.

Results.
We collected a total of 239 24-hr duplicate food samples collected from the forty-six CPES children. We found 14% or 5% of those food samples contained at least one OP or pyrethroid insecticide, respectively. A total of eleven OP insecticides, at levels ranging from 1 to 387 ng/g (ppb), and three pyrethroid insecticides, at levels ranging from 2 to 1,133 ng/g, were measured in children's food samples. We found many of the food items consumed by the CPES children were also on the list of the most-contaminated food commodities reported by the Environmental Working Group

Conclusions.
The frequent consumption of food commodities with episodic presence of pesticide residues that are suspected to cause developmental and neurological effects in young children supports the need for further mitigation.