A comprehensive review of detection and removal strategy for organic pesticide residues in Chinese herbal medicines.

Chinese herbal medicines (CHM) are plant-based medicines with a long-standing history of use in disease prevention, diagnosis, and treatment, guided by Chinese medicine principles due to their natural origins, minimal side effects, and distinctive conditioning effects. Nevertheless, the widespread application of organic pesticides (OPs) for pest and disease control has significantly impacted the quality and safety of CHM. As a result, considerable research is directed towards developing efficient techniques for detecting or eliminating OPs in CHM to address this issue. Different from the majority of other reviews focusing solely on detection or removal, this review comprehensively examines the overall pesticide control technologies, systematically classifies the types, functions and characteristics of major OPs in CHM, sorts out detection technologies such as chromatography and mass spectrometry as well as removal technologies including degradation and adsorption methods, analyzes their mechanisms and characteristics, and compares their strengths and limitations from the perspectives of cost, accuracy and other dimensions. It provides a comprehensive reference for understanding the status of pesticide residues and corresponding treatment strategies, and lays a solid theoretical foundation for improving the quality and safety of CHM.