ABSTRACT
Pesticides have been widely used to boost the production, effectiveness, and shelf life of agricultural food products, and this utilization has continued to rise, especially in developing nations with minimal or no precautionary protection for the exposed users due to lack of or improper laws guiding their use and the level of ignorance about the proper usage of these pesticides further increases the associated risk. Being that majority of the consumers of these cowpeas have little or no power on their production and storage, the purpose of this study is to identify the best home remedy for removing Lindane pesticides (having high level of toxicity and environmental persistence) from cowpea, taking pH of the solution and treatment time into account. In this study, the effectiveness of tap water, table salt, baking soda, and vinegar in removing Lindane pesticide from lab-contaminated cowpea was tested separately for the duration of 5 mins, 10 mins, and 15 mins, respectively. The cowpea sample used where obtained from Lagos Street, Benin City, Edo State. The sample was identified by Dr. B. Ogedegbe from Department of Crop Science, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, University of Benin. Thereafter, the identified sample was prepared, grouped, treated, Extracted and the extract analysed using Gas Chromatographic-Mass Spectrometry to determine the percentage decontamination achieved using various treatment solutions. The results obtain indicated that for treatment lasting for 15mins, vinegar was most effective in the elimination of lindane in cowpea sample spiked with 5% lindane followed by tap water, baking soda and table salt solution respectively while for the treatment lasting for the period of 5 to 10mins, water was most effective while table salt was the least effective solution in the elimination of lindane from from a spiked cowpea sample.
