Study of Toxic Chemicals Present in Mosquito Repellants

Abstract

Household pests such as mosquitoes, houseflies, cockroaches etc are important vectors for communicable diseases like malaria, dengue etc. The mosquito repellants are widely used as the insecticides to control the mosquitoes in households. The active ingredients of the mosquito coil are pyrethroid previously called as pyrethrins. This dissertatione valuated the practice of use of different types of mosquito repellants in the selected population and analyzed the chemical constituents present in mosquito repellants with aneffort to propose a standard protocol. Altogether 120 respondents were selected randomly for the survey. A semi-structured questionnaire was prepared. In the chemical analysis, a total of six solid forms of repellants and three liquid forms of mosquito repellants were included. The solid repellants were extracted by using soxlet extraction and shaking extraction method. For soxlet extraction 95%ethanol was used as solvent where as for shakingextr action method mixture of solution of formic acid and toluene in the ratio of 5:1 was used as solvent. The crude extractsobtained after the extraction was subjected to thin layer chromatography followed by column chromatography with aview to identify the compounds present in them. Gas generated by burning the coil of mosquito repellants was also analyzed. Gaschromatography coupled with mass spectroscopy (GC-MS) was conducted only for the residual solution obtained from smoke after burning the coil. The carbonyl content of the Suryamosquito coil and Octagon Good Knightmosquitocoil samples after burning the respective mosquito coils were analyzed by dinitro-salisylic acid (DNS) method. Among the respondents, 76% respondents were found to use the chemical agent as the mosquito repellants and rest of them usesnet.Among the chemical repellant users, liquid was used by 70%, coil by 22%, mat by 6% and cream by 2% of respondent. In carbonyl compound analysis,Octagon Good KnightandSuryamosquitocoil were found to contain4.44mg/mLand 4.78 mg/mLof carbonyl compoundsrespectively. The GC-MS analysisshows that the residual solution of gas collected after burning the Suryamosquitocoil and Octagon Good Knightmosquitocoil samples were found to containallethrin, palmiticacid, acridine, cyclopropanecarboxylic acid, 2,2-dimethyl-3-(2-methyl-1-propenyl)-,2-methyl-4-oxo-3-(2,4-pentadienyl)-2-cyclopenten-1-yl ester, stearic acid, decanoic acid(carpic acid), octadecanoic acid, hexadecanoic acid, n-heptadecanol-1,3-pentanol-2,3-dimethyl, benzyl benzoate, anthraquinone-2-methyl and cholestadiene.