Pesticide Residues Contamination of Vegetables and their Public Health Implications in Ghana

This study aimed at determining the residues concentrations of pesticides in vegetables, and assessing the health risk due to the daily consumption of contaminated vegetables for adults in the prominent farming community of Akumadan in Ghana. Fifteen pooled samples, belonging to five vegetable types (tomato, cabbage, pepper, onion and eggplants) purchased from local markets across Ghana were analysed for DDTs, endosulfan, HCHs, methoxychlor, dimethoate and lambda-cyhalothrin using GC-MS. The concentrations of the pesticides ranged from 0.01 to 46.95 μg/kg wet weight. Dietary data were collected from 130 residents. By combining the dietary and contaminant data, dietary exposure to the identified pesticides was calculated. Dietary exposure to pesticide residues at Akumadan is low and there is no associated health risk. However, the results of persistent contaminants are of particular health concern because of this persistence. The estimated exposure distributions were shown to be insensitive to valuation of the non-detect residue samples.