Pesticide use and food safety in Kathmandu Valley Nepal
Creators: name: Giri, Nirita
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2010
Subjects: Pesticide
Environmental pollution
Food Safety
Kathmandu Valley
Nepal

description: Nepal is a country with a very diverse topography with altitudes ranging from 60 m to 8848 m. The economy of the country is mainly based on agriculture. Chemical pesticides are excessively used by the farmers in order to meet the increasing demand for food for the fast growing population. Due to a lack of a proper, continuous and efficient governmental pesticide monitoring programme, Nepalese farmers are facing severe quality related problems when exporting agricultural products like honey, tea and others in European countries. Moreover, Nepal became a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2004 and can only maintain its membership if it installs an effective monitoring system. Data about pesticide use in various parts of the country have not been collected since many years due to technical and financial constraints. The existing situation urgently demands for the implementation of advanced and fit-for-purpose analytical procedures for accurate monitoring of pesticides in food, soil and drinking water and which would be needed for the management of the existing pesticide problem. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to develop a method which would be economically feasible for analysing soil and food articles in Nepal and applying this method in selected areas of Kathmandu valley so as to investigate the impacts of commonly used pesticides. Another objective was to investigate the awareness level of the farmers regarding pesticide use and health safety through a questionnaire survey. A total of 16 vegetables, 4 fruits, 15 soils at 10 cm depth and 4 soils at 3 different depths (10 cm, 30 cm and 50 cm) were collected on the farm of the interviewed farmers at neighbouring districts around Kathmandu. 11 tea samples that were grown at different tea estates of Nepal were also collected to study the level of pesticide residue. These samples were brought to Vienna for the laboratory analysis. The tea, fruit and vegetable samples were analyzed in the LVA GmbH, Vienna and the soil samples were analyzed in the laboratory of the Institute of Soil Research at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), Vienna. For this purpose, new analytical method was developed. The samples of tea were extracted by following Extraction/Partitioning and Dispersive Solid Phase extraction method QuEChERS and analyzed by Gas Chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) for food samples and LC-MS/MS (Agilent 6410 Triple Quad) for soil samples. QuEChERS method used for the analysis of food samples which was modified through the optimisation of fragmentor voltage and collision cell energy and was used for the extraction of soil samples. The questionnaire survey showed that the awareness level among the farmers regarding pesticide use and safety was very low. Out of 30 farmers interviewed, 50% of them stored pesticides in an unlocked room, more than 30% waited less than one week after pesticide application before harvest and more than 50% had problems of eye irritation and about 50% used no safety measures during pesticide handling. The banned pesticide Ethion was found in medium and best quality tea. Also, organic tea was found to be contaminated with pesticides. Some fruits and vegetable samples were also found to be contaminated with pesticides like Ethion, Chloropyrifos, Carbendazim. Almost all the soil samples except that of Kathmandu were found to be contaminated with pesticides. The data generated from this study could be useful for understanding the present situation of the pesticide contamination level around Kathmandu. However, a detailed study covering different ecological regions of Nepal in order to understand the exact situation of pesticide pollution of soils, food and water should be a topic for further research.
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