Study on The Use of QuEChERS Method for Analysis of Organochlorine Pesticides Residues in Cow's Milk

QuEChERS stands for (Quick, Easy, Cheap, Effective, Rugged and Safe) and pronounced as (catchers) is a method that had been developed for multi-pesticide residue analyses in food. This study was conducted to investigate the efficacy of QuEChERS method for analyzing the organochlorine pesticides residues in cow's milk. Twenty organochlorine pesticide namely (Benzene, 1,3,5-trichloro, Tetrachlorobenzene, Benzene pentachloro. alfa-Lindane, Benzene hexachloro, Beta Lindane, Gammexane, Quintozene, Heptachlor, Aldrine, Heptachlor epoxide, Endosulfan-I , p,p'-DDE, Dieldrin , Endrin , Endosulfan-II , DDD , o,p' DDT , p,p'DDT and Methoxychlor were examined. The linearity of the standard curve (r 2 ) of all the compounds were not less than (0.99) even with those compounds that showed low consistent recovery rates (1860%) such as 1,3,5-trichloro, Tetrachlorobenzene, Benzene, pentachloroand Benzene, hexachloro-) along the studied concentration range (25-1000ppb). The relative standard deviations of all compounds were less than 20% when using both AOAC, 2007.01(2007) and EN 15662 (2008) method. It could be concluded that when analyzing pesticide residues (specially organochlorine) in food (specially milk) using QuECHERS technique, spiked blank samples with the compound or compounds under investigation should be presented in the run sequence in between the real examined samples to make sure about the recovery rate of each analyte at different concentration to give an exact interpretation of the results. Is important to develop and optimize more specific methods when analyzing poorly recovered organochlorine pesticide in milk. Introduction Organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) can cause environmental damage and human health risks such as neurodegenerative diseases including Parkinson‘s disease and Alzheimer‘s disease (Kamel an Hoppin , 2004), pancreatic cancer and nonHodgkin‘s lymphoma may also included due organochlorine pesticides exposure (Cantor et al.,1992 and cohn et al.,2007) meanwhile there is an association between prenatal organochlorine exposure and higher rates of Attention Deficit and Egypt. J. Chem. Environ. Health, 2 (2):1-20 (2016) On line ISSN: 2536-9164. 2 Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) at school age children (Sagiv et al., 2010). The possible association between exposure to DDT (one of the most famous organochlorine pesticide) and various types of cancers in humans, especially breast cancer, had been studied extensively (Snedeker, 2001). Meanwhile, DDE is known to be oestrogenic mimicking compound that means it have oestrogen properties, and increased oestrogen exposure is a risk factor for breast cancer (Kortenkamp, 2006). OCPs are lipophilic with high resistance to degradation and long half-lives in humans. As most persistent OCPs have been banned years ago, it is expected to find these compounds at trace levels in environment and the food chain, persisting in soils, sediments in rivers and estuaries and in the marine environment (Ritter et al.,