TITLE:
Determination of Total Heavy Metals Content in Local Antidote Manufacturing Resources
AUTHORS:
Alexandre Ngama Mwabi, Pierre Yoniene Yassa, Vestine Ntakarutimana
KEYWORDS:
Heavy Metals, Local Resources, Contamination, Antidote
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Applied Sciences,
Vol.14 No.8,
August
15,
2024
ABSTRACT: The present work was initiated for searching and evaluating the total heavy metal content in some selected local resources used by traditional healers in locally made antidotes to search for their toxicity. Elekat public slaughterhouse in the city of Bukavu, the central market of Kadutu and in the Ruzizi plain, precisely in Sange city, have been the purchased centers. The samples of bull and cow horns, oil palm nut shells, cow bones, ginger, black pepper and Mwenga salt were used. The spectrometric method has been used to carry out heavy metal content in each local resource using the atomic absorption spectrometer (VARIAN 1275). The heavy metals found and their average content are as follows: copper (Cu: 124.79 mg/kg), lead (Pb: 76.41 mg/kg), chromium (Cr: 33.9 mg/kg), zinc (Zn: 190.86 mg/kg), Arsenic (As: 107.41 mg/kg) and cadmium (Cd: 0.05 mg/kg). The averages of total heavy metal contents for all samples are below the standard of each one. The determination of the heavy metal contents in these samples allows evaluating human intoxication risk. These results show that antidote technology can be run without any toxicity risk and showed statistically significant differences compared to the controls (p 0.05) for chromium, zinc and cadmium have been recorded. However, most of the heavy metals molecules being thioloprives and then bioccumulatives, antidotes made from them shall not be consumed during a long period.