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Kishimba, M.A., Henry, L., Mwevura, H., Mmochi, A.J., Mihale, M. and Hellar, H., 2004. The status of pesticide pollution in Tanzania. Talanta, 64(1), pp.48-53. |
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The paper summarises the findings of recent studies carried out to assess the levels of pesticide residues in water, sediment, soil and some
biota collected from different parts of Tanzania. Although the intention is to cover the whole country, so far the studies have focused on areas
with known large-scale pesticide use (Southern Lake Victoria and its basin, TPC sugar Plantations in Kilimanjaro region, Dar es Salaam
coast, Mahonda–Makoba basin in Zanzibar) and a former pesticide storage area at Vikuge Farm in Coast region). Analysis of the cleaned
extracts in GC-ECD/NPD revealed the dominance of organochlorines in all samples. Generally, low levels of residues were found in areas
associated with agricultural pesticide use but the levels in the former storage areas were substantially high. DDT and HCH were dominant in
all the studied areas. In the former areas, levels of DDT in water, sediments and soil were up to 2 gL−1, 700 g kg−1 and 500 g kg−1,
respectively, while those of HCH were up to 0.2 gL−1, 132 g kg−1 and 60 g kg−1, respectively. The levels in aquatic biota were much
higher than those in the water most likely due to bioaccumulation. In the former storage area at Vikuge the levels of pesticides in the topsoil
were alarmingly high. Their concentrations were up to 282,000 mg kg−1 dry weight for DDT and up to 63,000 mg kg−1 for HCH. A
herbicide, pendimethalin [N-(1-ethylpropyl)-2,6-dinitro-3,4-xylidine], was also found at concentrations up to 41,000 mg kg−1 dry weight.
Thus the total pesticide content in the soil was almost 40%. Following these findings the area is now earmarked to be a demonstration site for
a proposed GEF project ‘Bioremediation of POPs impacted soils in
22 © 2004 Published by Elsevier B.V. |
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