The Detection of Pesticide in Foods Using Electrochemical Sensors

Pesticides involving fungicides, herbicides, and insecticides are widely used in most food production to control pests (e.g., insects, fungi, rodents, worms, and herbs) that would otherwise destroy or reduce food production. In the area of agriculture, the usage of insecticides, herbicides, molluscicides, and fungicides has an increasing importance. Pesticides might be harmful as well as have beneficial effects. Pesticides may also be nonbiodegradable, so they persist in the environment and may accumulate in living organisms. Many pesticides are toxic property, so they can be dangerous to health. Some health problems can occur, such as bone marrow disorders, carcinogenicity, infertility, cytogenic effects, neurological diseases, and immunological and respiratory problems. Hence, food control is very important and necessary for living organisms. To date, many methods have been applied to determine pesticide residues in food samples. Electrochemical method is one of the analytical methods which can provide sensitive, reliable, short analysis time, and no pretreatment steps can be easily miniaturized and integrated with respect to other analytical methods. In this chapter, to control pesticides in food samples, developed modern electrochemical methods were given with new, sensitive, and selective sensors.