In this study, 24 breast milk samples, obtained from rural Maya women, from municipalities of Yucatan, Mexico, were analyzed for organochlorine pesticide (OCP) residues by gas chromatography. Recent studies have shown that Maya communities have a poor perception about the proper usage and handling of OCP. The karstic soil in this area has a high vulnerability to groundwater pollution by the use of OCP in agriculture and livestock activities. The impact of the ecosystem on human health is much more critical due to the prevailing poverty and a very low educational level of these communities. About 30% of the Maya population consumes water directly from contaminated wells and sinkholes, resulting in a chronic exposure to OCP. The samples served to identify and quantify high levels of OCP residues (18.43 mg/kg of heptachlor epoxide and 1.92 mg/kg of endrin in the metropolitan zone; 2.10 mg/kg of dieldrin, 0.117 mg/kg of endosulfan II, 0.103 mg/kg of heptachlor, 0.178 mg/kg of endrin, and 0.127 mg/kg of endrin aldehyde in the main agricultural zone and on the west coast). The detected levels of OCP residues are a major concern and represent a potential risk to women and children in the region. This could be associated with the high rates of cervical uterine and breast cancer mortality in Yucatan. Thus, regulations on the usage of OCP and their enforcement are necessary, and it is important to establish a yearly monitoring program for OCP residues in breast milk and groundwater, as well as to implement health promotion programs for women in particular and the general population in general.
Bryodiversity is naturally serving the ecosystems sustainably. It serves the environments by preventing natural disaster (fl ooding), maintaining the quality of the water body and fi lter or treats the pollutants naturally. Effi cient bryodiversity management is needed for environmental cost cutting and have a cost-eff ective management strategy. To achieve this, cluster and principal component analyses (PCA) were manipulated to produce the linkage distance between the OTUs and identify the important groups of characters, respectively. In return, it becomes a guideline for bryofl ora and environmental managements. In this study, 23 OTUs and 156 characters were analyzed. Th e output from the reliability and item analysis showed that the data set is highly reliable (Cronbach's alpha = 0.9627). From the cluster analysis, it showed that 5 clustered groups (manageable units) could be derived from the produced phenogram. Th is is based on the nearest neighbour amalgation rule and Euclidean distances. As for the principal component analysis, three factors were derived and explained 75.1064% of the variation with 56.0485%(PC1), 11.7346%(PC2) and 7.3233%(PC3), respectively. Th e ordination showed that 5 manageable units were derived from PC1 and 3 manageable units for PC2 and PC3, respectively. In conclusion, conservation should precede any biodiversity management plans.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.