Parasitic Contamination of Raw Vegetables in Amol, North of Iran

Background:: One of the most important ways of pathologic and non-pathologic parasites transmission is through eating raw vegetables. Iranian people believe that eating raw vegetables is an important way to get some essential vitamins and minerals. Objectives:: According to the high prevalence of pathologic parasites and also exporting different vegetables to the other provinces such as Tehran, we conducted this study to evaluate the parasitic pollution of raw vegetables in Amol city. Materials and Methods:: This is a descriptive and analytic study compromised of 200 samples from 10 different vegetables including spinach, garden cress, parsley, lettuce, peppermint, radish, green onion, basil, coriander and scallion. The samples were evaluated using timely-sediment method and then centrifuging concentrating. The obtained results were analyzed by SPSS software and χ 2/Fisher's Exact Test. Results:: Results showed that 93 (46.5%) of all vegetables (collected from 20 regions) were contaminated with pathologic and non-pathologic parasites. Among these, spinach and coriander were the highest (17.2%) and the lowest (3.2%) contaminated samples, respectively. The isolated parasites were nematode larva 25.8%, Giardia cyst 22.5%, Entamoeba coli cyst 19.3%. However, the obtained results from 100 restaurants and kebab samples did not show any parasitic contamination. Conclusions:: Given hygiene issues and health status of people, the prevalence of some parasitic contaminations is the biggest problems among vegetable consumers. Using organized and new methods for irrigating the agricultural fields, preventing animals to enter the vegetable’s farmlands and also improving people’s knowledge on proper washing of vegetables can be useful in decreasing parasites prevalence.