SDCA Student Research Journal

Abstract

This research was centered to compare the formaldehyde content of the sweet orange peel extract to commercially prepared 10% neutral buffered formalin. The chosen two (2) specimens were pig’s heart and liver. As replacement to human tissue, the pig provides specimens closely resembling human tissue. In spite of these advantages in Formalin, the health and safety risks are of concern and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) emphasized it as Group-A carcinogen. Motivated by this, the researchers made this research to find safer alternatives. The sweet orange peel was grated off and merged with water. The extract was separated from the residual solids using a clean cloth then filtered using Whatman 42 filter paper. After, samples were kept in normal refrigerator for three (3) days at a temperature of 4˚C. The pH of the diluted samples was kept between 6 and 6.5. 0.1 N potassium hydroxide (KOH) was used to adjust the pH. The researchers used t-test for the statistical treatment. Based on the result of this study, there is a significant difference in terms of the effectiveness of formalin from sweet orange (Citrus sinensis) peel extract in histopathologic tissue preparation as compared to commercially prepared formalin. It was also discovered that sweet orange (Citrus sinensis) is not an effective alternative histopathologic fixative; however, future researchers may perform other methods of extracting the formaldehyde content from the sweet orange peel aside from manual extraction.

Keywords: Formaldehyde; Carcinogen; pH; Alternative; KOH; Citrus sinensis; T-test; Pig’s heart; Pig’s liver; 10% neutral buffered formalin; Tissue.