Occurrence of preformed volatile nitrosamines in preparations of some Nigerian medicinal plants: a preliminary report.

Preparations of some tropical plants of medicinal importance collected from the savannah vegetational belt of Nigeria were analysed for preformed volatile N-nitrosamines. N-nitrosamines were analyzed by chemiluminescence detection on a thermal energy analyzer (TEA) following gas chromatographic (GC) separation. Only N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) in the range of 1.2-3.4 microg/kg was detected in four out of the 29 sample preparations. These preliminary data suggest that medicinal plant preparations may be due in part to microbial contamination, contributing to N-nitroso compound burden in many developing countries where ethnomedicine in still widely practised.