Romanian Society of Pharmaceutical Sciences
 

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LC-MS/MS USE FOR TESTING PESTICIDES IN CANNABINOID-CONTAINING PRODUCTS

NICOLETA MIRELA BLEBEA 1,2#, GABRIEL HANCU 3#, TEODOR COSTACHE 4, ANNE-MARIE CIOBANU 2*, ANCA NICOARĂ 2#, OANA KARAMPELAS 2, SIMONA NEGREȘ 2

¹“Ovidius” University of Constanța, Faculty of Pharmacy, 6 Căpitan Aviator Al Șerbănescu Street, 900470, Constanța,
Romania
2“Carol Davila” University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Faculty of Pharmacy, 6 Traian Vuia Street, 020956, Bucharest, Romania
3“George Emil Palade” University of Medicine, Pharmacy, Science and Technology of Târgu Mureș, Faculty of Pharmacy, 38 Gheorghe Marinescu Street, 540142, Târgu Mureș, Romania
4Scient Research Center for Instrumental Analysis, Tâncăbești, 1 Petre Ispirescu Street, 077167, Tâncăbești, Ilfov, Romania

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As the consumption of oils which contain cannabidiol (CBD) is increasing, the exposure to pesticides of the Cannabis genus became an important issue due to the potential side effects on the consumers’ health. CBD is one of the main alkaloids of the Cannabis plants, together with other 120 identified structures. The current study presents the development of a method for the pesticides determination using the high-performance liquid chromatography in tandem with mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) for the analysis of some CBD oils. The complete analytical testing includes cannabinoids quantitation, pesticides and mycotoxins analysis, heavy metals analysis, residual solvents analysis, terpene profiling, and microbial screening. The determination of the pesticides is the most complex of these tests, being also the most important analysis in terms of safety for consumption, especially if we have in view the long term use of CBD products. The developed method showed selectivity, sensitivity and good linearity; its main advantage being that it does not require an extensive sample preparation before the analysis.