ABSTRACT

Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products (PPCPs) are cosmetics, drugs, or other consumer products used to cleanse, beautify, or treat humans or animals; including prescriptions and over the counter drugs, soaps, fragrances, solvents, non-ionic and anionic surfactants, bleaches, dyes, and sunscreen agents. They are termed Contaminants of Emerging Concerns and are Endocrine Disrupting Substances in both aquatic animals and humans. This study therefore seeks to analyze Caffeine in PPCPs that could be present in fish and water samples from Ureje dam, Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti State. Fish and water samples were collected. Questionnaire survey was done using Random sampling method to find out peoples' knowledge, attitudes and practices with regards to PPCPs, their modes of disposal and their effects on the aquatic ecosystem and human health. High Performance Liquid Chromatography was used to analyse for the presence of Caffeine in the samples while Descriptive analyses were used to analyse the questionnaire results and they were presented in pie charts. The fish and water samples from Ureje dam did not show any peak at 8.87minutes retention time for Caffeine indicating that the samples do not contain detectable levels of Caffeine and so are safe for human consumption, human use and domestic purposes. Of the respondents, 37% had heard about PPCPs; 34% know what they are; 34% use PPCPs; 54% are not sure these PPCPs have effects on waterbodies and aquatic life. Also, throwing in trash cans and then to garbage collection points rated highest (43%) among modes of disposing contents and containers of PPCPs and 57% think that their mode of disposing these contents and containers is appropriate. Furthermore, 83% and 26% of the respondents are not aware that PPCPs and the chemicals they are made up of could have negative effects on fish in their environment and on humans respectively. These indicate a low level of knowledge and awareness of PPCPs.