Multi residual pesticide monitoring in commercial herbal crude drug materials in South Korea.

In order to reduce health risks from residual pesticides in herbal drug products, the residue information of pesticides should be acquired. Therefore, 38 commodities (229 herbal crude drug materials) were analyzed for 44 different pesticides. Among the 229 samples (36 types of herbal crude drugs), seven imported and two domestic drug materials were contaminated with eight pesticides (0.034-0.579 mg/kg) such as BHC, procymidone, endosulfan, etc. Among the eight detected pesticides, four were fungicides, which were found in underground crude drug materials such as rhizoma or radix.