EVALUATION OF THE EFFECT OF VINEGAR (ACETIC ACID) ON THE REMOVAL OF ORGANOCHLORINE PESTICIDES

ABSTRACT

Pesticides can be defined as any substance or group of substances with the ability of preventing, destroying or controlling any pests, which may be in form of undesired plant or animal species and also vectors of human or animal diseases, that may cause harm or interfer with production, processing, storage and transportation of agricultural products (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. 2002). There various groups of pesticides such as the organophosphate pesticides and the organochlorine pesticides. The organochlorine pesticides are a group of synthetic, chlorinated hydrocarbon compounds that have been used extensively in agriculture for pest control and also used in the control of insects like mosquitoes. Examples of this class of pesticides includes; chordane, toxaphene lindane, endosulfan, deldrin and several other pesticides (Aktar et al., 2009). These compounds have been implicated or linked to wide array of health promblems ranging from cancers, to nervous system disorders, endocrine disruptors and several other health conditions (Moretto, 2018). Adequate removal or decontamination of agricultural and food products is therefore a necessity. This study attempts to find ways of decontamination of of cowpea using house hold chemicals like vinegar. During the study, cowpea impregnated with lindane and endosulfan were soaked in a solution of vinegar for 0, 15 and 30 minutes respectively at 40ºC. After which the contaminated cowpea was rinsed and dried in the oven at 60ºC, the dried sample was then milled and subjected to soxhlet extraction using 150ml dichloromethane for 3 hours. After extraction the sample was collected in a sample tube and sent for GC-MS. Samples left for 30 minutes have the highest rate of pesticide removal, followed by 15 minutes and 0 minutes. This may be due to the longer exposure of the contaminated cowpea to vinegar which may lead to subsequent leaching of the pesticide present in the cowpea into the vinegar solution. From the study, soaking vinegar for a minimum of 15 minutes is likely to decrease the level of organochlorine pesticide present in cowpea and is recommended for domestic removal of organochlorine pesticides from cowpea