Modeling the Diffusion of Dichlorvos through Human Stomach Lining

Dichlorvos is the main poison in sniper pesticide which has produced negative effects especially among youths in recent times. The poisonous effects of dichlorvos on humans require urgent studies to combat the damaging impacts among humans. However, the limitations of carrying out experiments on human test subjects request the quest for alternative approach. Such approach can be made through modeling the transport of dichlorvos in the human body and the resulting negative effect. Therefore, this work presents mathematical modeling for the diffusion of dichlorvos through the human stomach lining. The model is set up to determine the amount of dichlorvos that leaves the stomach through diffusion alone and the health effects various concentration of the poison has on humans. Two cases are studied in order to captivate the effects of dichlorvos poisoning for two different scenarios. The initial condition is set to 0.05L and different driving forces is used to model the scenarios in spherical coordinates. The governing equation is derived from Fick’s first law and is solved analytically, a numerical solution is obtained using MATLAB’s pdepe solver and graphs are plotted for the two cases. From the results it is observed that about 14.4% of dichlorvos is diffused through the stomach lining in about 60hours for the first case while for the second case, the periodic intake of water along with dichlorvos gradually reduces the dichlorvos concentration in the stomach. These results show consistency with some experimental results from literature. Therefore, the model can be used in addition to the modes of treatment obtained from literature to predict the concentration of dichlorvos in a person and also proffer a life-saving treatment.