In recent years, consumers have become more interested in convenient lifestyles, leading to increased use of salted cabbages for preparation of kimchi. This study aimed to investigate the safety of heavy metals, pesticide residues, and foodborne pathogens in commercial salted cabbages in Seoul from August to November, 2014. The survey, which was conducted to determine whether or not salted cabbages were prepared under the highest sanitary conditions, showed that Seoulites are interested in purchasing hygienic and safe salted cabbages. The average amounts (range) of Pb and Cd found in 30 salted cabbage samples were 0.007 (0.000~0.063) mg/kg and 0.004 (0.000~0.012) mg/kg, respectively. The cabbages were analyzed for residues from 285 types of pesticides using the multiresidue method. Residues for pesticides were not detected. Major foodborne pathogens, specifically Escherichia coli, Salmonella spp., Listeria monocytogenes, Campylobacter jejuni, Staphylococcus aureus, Vibrio parahaemolyticus, Enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli, Bacillus cereus, Clostridium perfringens and Norovirus, were also not detected.

This study was conducted to investigate the consumers' recognition and information need for food safety, especially focused on pesticide residues, foodborne illness, and food additives. The data were collected from 350 adults living in Taegu and Pusan by the self-administered questionnaire. Frequencies and chi-square tests were conducted by SPSS. The results of the survey were as follows: (1) the consumers' concerns about food safety were high, (2) many respondents worried about eating vegetables, fruits and grains in turn because of pesticide residues, and did not trust the results from food-safety tests, (3) the major factor for foodborne illness was regarded as unfreshed or contaminated food stuffs, (4) many consumers concerned highly about preservatives among food additives, and tried to consume food containing less food additives, and (5) many respondents wanted to get the information about harmfulness of pesticide residues in foods, method to choose fresh food, and safety of food additives.

Korea represents high suicide rate by poisoning. Especially, since a lot of people died by high concentrated paraquat which has extremely high fatality rate, paraquat sales were prohibited in 2012. We investigated to find out how the prohibition of sales affected occurrence of pesticide poisoned patients and what kinds of influences did it have for severity and death rate. By targeting patients who visited emergency room by pesticide poisoning from 2010 to 2014, we researched insecticides poisoned patients and herbicidal poisoned patients grouped into 9 categories. Before and after 2012, We compared A term (2010, 2011) and B term (2013, 2014)’s pesticide occurrence, especially distribution of herbicide occurrence and compared hospitalization rate, hospitalization period, length of stay in ICU (Intensive Care Unit), severity, and death rate. The number of insecticide patients was 219 (37.4%) and the number of herbicide patients was 367 (62.6%) who visited emergency room in five years and the rate was similar every year. In case of paraquat, there was 70.5% decrease by 105 people for A term and 31 people for B term and increase of double for glyphosate, glufosinate, and other herbicides. The death rate was decreased but hospitalization was increased. There weren’t any difference of rate in ICU admission, intubation and ventilator therapy. By prohibition of using paraquat, the death rate by pesticide poisoning was decreased. However, patients who poisoned by other herbicides were increased, so hospitalization rate increased and there weren’t any difference at patient’s severity rates.