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Nasty Pesticides Persist in Ground Water 7-1-08
NEWS RELEASE
Contact: Sara Uttech, American Society of Agronomy, 608-268-4948, suttech
atagronomy.org
USGS scientists examine factors influencing pesticide detection in ground water
in the May-June issue of Journal of Environmental Quality.
Numerous studies over the past four decades have established that
pesticides, which are typically applied at the land surface, can move downward
through the unsaturated zone to reach the water table at detectable
concentrations. The downward movement of pesticide degradation products, formed
in situ, can also contribute to the contamination of ground water. Once in
ground water, pesticides and their degradation products can persist for years,
depending upon the chemical structure of the compounds and the environmental
conditions.
Scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) investigated the occurrence of
selected pesticides and their degradation products in ground water during a
study funded by the USGS National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Program.
Specifically, the authors examined several of the factors that can influence the
likelihood with which pesticides and their degradation products are detected in
shallow ground water—including oxidation-reduction (redox) conditions and
ground-water residence times—at four study sites across the United States.
Results from the study were published in the May-June 2008 issue of the Journal
of Environmental Quality.
The study revealed that the pesticides and degradation products detected most
frequently in shallow ground-water samples from all four areas were
predominantly from two classes of herbicides—triazines and chloroacetanilides.
None of the insecticides or fungicides examined were detected in ground-water
samples. In most samples, the concentrations of the pesticide degradation
products greatly exceeded those of their parent compounds. Pesticides or their
degradation products were detected most commonly in ground water that recharged
between 1949 and 2004, and in monitoring wells spanning the full depth range
(about 2 to 52 m) examined—from the shallowest to the deepest wells—in all four
study areas. Comparisons of pesticide concentrations with a variety of
environmental variables indicated that redox conditions, ground-water residence
times, and the concentrations of dissolved oxygen and excess nitrogen gas from
denitrification (the breaking down of nitrogen compounds such as nitrate) were
all important factors affecting the concentrations of pesticides and their
degradation products in all four ground-water systems.
The four sites selected for this study were located in agricultural landscapes
in Maryland, Nebraska, California, and Washington. They were also selected for
variability in overall land use, crops grown, climate, agricultural practices,
irrigation, geohydrologic settings, and redox conditions. During the spring of
2004, water samples were collected from a network of 59 shallow single or
clustered monitoring wells and analyzed for the occurrence of 45 pesticides and
40 pesticide degradation products, including herbicide, insecticides, and
fungicides.
Greg Steele, senior author for this study, stated “Atrazine and its degradation
product deethylatrazine both persisted in similar amounts at the Nebraska site,
but in water samples from the other three study sites, there was little change
with apparent age of water as the fraction as deethylatrazine generally exceeded
80% of the sum of atrazine and deethylatrazine. On the other hand, in three of
the four areas studied (Washington excluded because it did not have any
detections of metolachlor or its degradation products), the proportion of
metolachlor in ground water was far less than that for its degradation
products.”
Comment:
The only way to really be sure your drinking water is free of this chemical as well as heavy metals, fluoride and other pesticides is to use reverse osmosis, filtration designed to remove it, or distilling. I personally prefer my water ionizer with pre-filtration!