Source: myjoyonline
A professor at the Department of Chemistry at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, (KNUST) has decried the use of Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) in the cultivation of food stuff in the country.
Professor Nathaniel Owusu Boadi said the habit is very common in the Ashanti Region.
According to him, the use of the chemical has been banned since 1993 by the virtue of Ghana being a signatory to the Stockholm Convention.
However, two separate research works he led into the matter proved that it is still being used by farmers in the country, especially in the Ashanti Region.
“I did two studies, one on organochlorine pesticides in fruits and the other in vegetables. These were from the Ashanti Region. In both cases, I looked at these organochlorine pesticides mainly because they are banned and are not supposed to be used for any form of cultivation in Ghana since 1993 because we are signatories to the Stockholm Convention.”
“However, it is interesting that for both studies, we found evidence that these organochlorine pesticides were still in use, especially with DDT which was very common in our studies and so that raises a lot of concern for us because these are banned so why are they still being used.”
Prof. Nathaniel Owusu Boadi described the findings as alarming.
“These pesticides which under normal circumstances are not supposed to be used in vegetable cultivation ideally even if they were not banned, they shouldn’t be used on Cocoa, but we found them in alarming concentrations on these vegetables.”
He revealed this on Joy SMS on Wednesday, June 15
He thus charged the Food and Drugs Authority to up its game to curb the menace.
