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Pesticides

  • Page ID
    149071
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    Could toxic pesticides like DDT be responsible for the deaths of large numbers of lesser flamingos at Lake Nakuru, Kenya? While many organochlorine pesticides including DDT have been banned for decades in the US due to their adverse effects on bird populations, especially bald eagles, they are still used for mosquito control in tropical regions of Africa where malaria is epidemic. In addition, East Africa has become an international dumping ground for stockpiles of obsolete pesticides. In this section we explore the possible role of organochlorine pesticides in the flamingo deaths and examine the use of gas chromatography – mass spectrometry (GC-MS) to separate, detect and quantify pesticides in Lake Nakuru water samples.

    • Instructor’s Guide:
      • ** For instructor’s guide in a PDF or Word document, please contact Cindy Larive. (clarive@ucr.edu)
    • EPA Method

    Contributors and Attributions

    • Dr. Heather A. Bullen (University of Northern Kentucky)
    • Dr. Alanah Fitch (Loyola University – Chicago): afitch@luc.edu
    • Dr. Richard S. Kelly (East Stroudsburg University): rskelly@esu.edu
    • Dr. Cynthia K. Larive (University of California – Riverside): clarive@ucr.edu
    • Content from ASDL.

    This page titled Pesticides is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Contributor via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.

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