In-vitro effectiveness of a novel herboclean herbal solution in removing pesticides, heavy metals and microbial agents from fruits and vegetables

Abstract

In recent years, the incidence of undesirable heavy metals, pesticide residues and microbial contaminants in fruits and vegetables has caused severe worldwide public health concerns. In this investigation, we intended to investigate the in-vitro effectiveness of a novel herboclean herbal solution in eliminating pesticides, heavy metals and microbes from the fruits and vegetables collected from various markets. The collected fruits and vegetables were immersed separately in a beaker containing an already prepared herboclean herbal solution for 30 min. The efficacy of the herboclean herbal solution in removing the pesticides and heavy metals was studied using Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS), and Inductively Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICPMS), respectively. The reduction in microbes was analyzed by the plate count method. From the result, it was clear that the average removal rate of pesticide residues from fruits and vegetables was 89.89±7.21%. In the case of heavy metals average removal rate was 94.74±9.12%. Whereas in the case of microbes, the removal rate was 90.98±8.38% after washing with Herboclean herbal solution. These results clearly demonstrated that the herboclean herbal solution was very effective in eliminating various pesticides, heavy metals and microbial agents from fresh fruits and vegetables without interfering with their integrity or sensorial parameters. Moreover, this is the first report regarding the efficacy of natural herboclean herbal solutions.