Undergraduates Use Analytical Chemistry to Assist Haiti Program

Undergraduate researchers in Analytical Chemistry are supporting the Notre Dame Haiti Program with experiments and tests on salt additives used in Haiti to provide iodine and to fight lymphatic filariasis, a parasitic disease also known as elephantiasis. The students are studying how homogeneously the sprayed-on additives are distributed in the salt, how to check the concentrations to be sure the salt contains the proper amounts, and how washing the salt, a common practice in Haiti, affects the additives.

Notre Dame priest and biologist Rev. Thomas G. Streit, C.S.C., who started the project, asked Marya Lieberman, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry, for help with the analysis because she teaches analytical chemistry laboratories at Notre Dame. Junior Alyssa Rangel, senior Patrick R. Brown and senior Brennan Bollman, who has visited Haiti and provided salt samples, are involved in the work this semester, and 66 students in,Analytical Chemistry (Chem 31333), will help to analyze samples of Bon Sel in one of their lab experiments.

The Haiti project involves adding iodine to salt for its important health benefits. “One of the problems is that Haiti is one of the only countries in the world that does not iodize their salt supply,” Lieberman says. “Iodine is important for proper thyroid function and proper brain development.” Iodine deficiency is the main preventable cause of mental retardation in children. (See more information at the Salt Institute website.) 

The project also involves adding diethylcarbamazine citrate (DEC) to salt to kill the nematode that causes lymphatic filariasis. Lymphatic filariasis, which affects some 40 million people worldwide and half the population in some coastal areas of Haiti, causes gross swelling of body parts because of the body’s reaction to the parasitic nematode. DEC is safe, non-toxic and effective against the parasite.

The salt, manufactured from sea salt and marketed in Haiti as Bon Sel, does not require washing as some less-pure manufactured salts on the island do, but many Haitians wash salt as a matter of habit. Researchers are testing the effects of that practice as well as checking the dosage and distribution of the additives in the salt.“We’re trying to test the salt, if it has a sufficient amount of the iodine and the DEC,” Rangel says. “We’re helping people in Haiti.”

At the Port-au-Prince facility that enriches the salt, an analytical chemist tests the level of iodine. The DEC compound used to kill the nematode is more difficult to analyze in detail. A fast-acting test using an acid-base indicator can show that it is present but does not measure its quantity. Researchers in the Notre Dame lab are using high-performance liquid chromatography, which is not available at the factory in Haiti. “We’re also trying to develop a simple test that they could do at the factory that would be semi-quantitative,” Lieberman says.

Brown, a senior majoring in physics and chemistry who is taking 21 credit hours as well as working on the project this semester, says the experience helps him see the importance of chemistry for life. “I was really interested in the program,” says Brown, who is taking Dennis Jacobs’ Chemistry in the Service of the Community course. “I’m interested in ways to apply chemistry.”

Learn More: www.haiti.nd.edu