A method for determining 68 pesticides in river water using stir bar sorptive extraction (SBSE)-thermal desorption (TD)-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) is described. SBSE sampling was optimized for sample solution pH, salting-out and methanol addition. Although salting-out enhanced the ability of the method to extract most of the pesticides with low absolute recoveries, the absolute recoveries of four pesticides were not improved by salting-out. The detection limits of the method for the pesticides ranged from 0.2 to 20 ng/l. Analyte recoveries from a river water sample spiked with standards at 10 and 100 ng/l were 58.5-132.0% (RSD: 1.8-15.8%) and 61.0-121.3% (RSD: 1.4-20.2%), respectively.