Abstract: The aim of this study was to ascertain the health risk of pesticide residues through the consumption of tomatoes from Qiandongnan, Guizhou and the level of consumer protection of the existing maximum residue limits (MRLs). The risk assessment of pesticide residues in children and the general population was carried out based on the national estimated daily intake and national estimated short-term intake, and the level of consumer protection was assessed based on the theoretical maximum daily intake and theoretical maximum short-term intake. Besides, the matrix ranking was employed to rank the risk of pesticides in tomatoes. The results showed that a total of 26 pesticides in all tomatoes were detected with a detection rate of 2%–20%; of these, 4 exceeded their MRLs, which was found in 2%–4% of the samples. The chronic dietary intake risks of all pesticides except for fipronil (459% and 214%) expressed as percentage relative to the acceptable daily intake were 0.008 40%–23.7% and 0.003 92%–11.0% for children and the general population, respectively, and the acute dietary intake risks expressed as percentage to the acute reference dose were 0.015 6%–56.0% and 0.006 85%–24.6%, respectively, for children and adults. The levels of consumer protection against chronic and acute dietary intake risks were 0.304–60.9 and 0.462–153 for children, and 0.652–130 and 1.05–349 for the general population, respectively. Fipronil was a highly hazardous pesticide that may cause unacceptable chronic dietary intake risk for all consumers. In addition, both chronic and acute risk levels were within an acceptable limit. The level of consumer protection of the MRLs was unacceptable against chronic dietary intake risk of profenofos and chlorothaloni for all consumers and against acute dietary intake risk of iprodione for children. Therefore, more attention should be paid to the pesticides with high risk profenofos, chlorothalonil, iprodione and fipronil in tomatoes from Qiandongnan, Guizhou.

Key words: tomato, pesticide, risk assessment, maximum residue limit