: Leafy vegetables are widely consumed in South Korea, especially in the form of kimchi and namul (seasoned vegetables) and are used for wrapping meat. Therefore, the management of pesticide residues in leafy vegetables is very important. A total of 17,977 samples (49 leafy vegetables) were mainly collected in the largest production area of leafy vegetables (Gwangju Metropolitan City and Chonnam Province) in South Korea. They were analyzed within the government’s monitoring programs (Gwangju Metropolitan City) of pesticide residues between 2005 and 2019. Pesticide residues were found in 2815 samples (15.7%), and 426 samples (2.4%) from among these exceeded the specified maximum residue limits (MRLs). Samples exceeding the MRLs were mostly detected in spinach, ssamchoo (brassica lee ssp. namai), crown daisy, lettuce, and perilla leaves. Azoxystrobin, dimethomorph, and procymidone were the most frequently detected pesticides. However, procymidone, diniconazole, and lufenuron were found to most frequently exceed the MRLs. The rate of MRLs exceeding has been managed below the average (2.4%) more recently than in the past in this area. Further, leafy vegetables with the most violations of the MRLs in our study in South Korea were not harmful to health by a risk assessment (the range of the hazard index was 0.001–7.6%).
Community mitigation measures taken owing to the COVID-19 pandemic have caused a decrease in the number of respiratory viruses, including the human parainfluenza virus type 3 (HPIV3), and a delay in their occurrence. HPIV3 was rarely detected as a consequence of monitoring respiratory viral pathogens in Gwangju, Korea, in 2020; however, it resurfaced as a delayed outbreak and peaked in September–October 2021. To understand the genetic characteristics of the reemerging virus, antigenic gene sequences and evolutionary analyses of the hemagglutinin-neuraminidase (HN) and fusion (F) genes were performed for 129 HPIV3 pathogens prevalent in Gwangju from 2018 to 2021. Unlike the prevalence of various HPIV3 strains in 2018-2019, the prevalence of HPIV3 by strains with reduced diversity was confirmed in 2021. It could be inferred that this decrease in genetic diversity was due to the restriction of inflow from other regions at home and abroad following the community mitigation measures and the spread within the region. The HPIV3 that emerged in 2021 consisted of HN coding regions that were 100% consistent with the sequence identified in Saitama, Japan, in 2018, and F coding regions exhibiting 99.6% homology to a sequence identified in India in 2017, among the ranks reported to the National Center for Biotechnology Information. The emergence of a new lineage in a community can lead to a mass outbreak by collapsing the collective immunity of the existing acquired area; therefore, continuous monitoring is necessary.
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