30/09/2023
NUL Student finds potentially harmful preservatives in fruits!
In the busy streets of Roma, Lesotho, a dedicated National University of Lesotho (NUL) student, Kopano Mokoena, was chasing something. Armed with powerful scientific tools, his mission was to uncover the presence of preservatives called parabens in the fresh fruits and vegetables sold by local street vendors and supermarkets.
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Parabens, those preservatives found in cosmetics, medicines, and food, have raised concerns about their potential harm to human health.
"No one, in my knowledge, had yet ventured to investigate the paraben content in fruits sold in the streets of Lesotho," he said. Mokoena aimed to change that.
He employed High-Performance Liquid Chromatography with Diode Array Detection (HPLC-DAD) to meticulously analyze various fruits gathered from the Roma market.
He found Methyl, Ethyl, Propyl, and Butyl parabens in both tomato and apple samples from both local supermarkets and street vendors. Remarkably, Butyl paraben stood out in significant quantities in both types of fruit, while Propyl paraben appeared in smaller amounts.
The similarities were striking: all four parabens were present in both apples and tomatoes, with the quantity following a descending order of Butyl paraben > Methyl paraben > Ethyl paraben > Propyl paraben.
This raised intriguing questions about the potential sources of these parabens, perhaps hinting at the involvement of packaging materials or synthetic fertilizers.
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