**4. Conclusions**

The contamination of breast milk is a critical problem since it affects the health of both the mother and her infant. In the last few decades, numerous studies reported chemical contamination in breast milk, especially pesticide residues, but antibiotic residue studies on breast milk remain rare. These contaminations are usually associated with socio-demographic status and dietary habits of nursing mothers. This study conducted for the first time, in Syrian refugee camps, presented an absence of antibiotic residues in the majority of the samples and the presence of pesticide residues in only 5% of our total breast milk sample. These findings consider the breast milk collected from Syrian refugee lactating mothers safe from the chemical contaminants screened. This could be due to the poor living and environmental conditions in the camp. It is worth conducting more studies on other Syrian refugee camps to test the effect of the camp living conditions on breast milk safety.

**Author Contributions:** N.S. declares that she is a Msc student. She contributed in the sampling, running the experiments and the data acquisition and data analysis. A.J. contributed in the design and the conception of the work, interpretation and the analysis of the data as the manuscript writing and submission. N.E.D. declares that she is the supervisor of the Msc student. She contributed in the design and the conception of the work, interpretation and the analysis of the data as well as the manuscript writing and submission. She is the corresponding author.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Acknowledgments:** The authors thankfully acknowledge Michel Afram, the director of the Lebanese Agricultural Research Institute for his continuous support.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
