Suchergebnisse

AbstractPesticides applied to agricultural land have been shown to decrease the quality of water entering the Great Barrier Reef lagoon. This issue is addressed by the Reef 2050 Water Quality Improvement Plan which includes a pesticide reduction target. As part of a wider educational strategy, one method that could help meet the target is to provide stakeholders with information that assists in the selection and use of pesticide active ingredients (PAIs) that pose a lower risk to aquatic environments compared to those currently used. This study developed a Pesticide Decision Support Tool (PDST) in collaboration with stakeholders for the sugar cane industry. The PDST covers all PAIs registered and applied to sugar cane in Australia and four additional PAIs registered for use on crops grown in rotation with sugar cane. The PDST incorporates both the measure of mobility and persistence of a PAI and the measure of effect, which is based on the PAI application rate and ecotoxicity threshold value. The aquatic risk, which is the product of the measure of effect and the measure of mobility and persistence, is a measure of the likelihood that a PAI will reach the aquatic environment and cause harmful effects. Insecticide active ingredients (e.g., cadusafos, chlorpyrifos) posed the greatest aquatic risk, followed by herbicide active ingredients (e.g., MSMA, metolachlor), while fungicide AIs typically had a lower aquatic risk. An interactive spreadsheet allows characteristics, including application rate and tank mixes, to be considered when assessing the potential risk. While focusing on sugar cane, the results are equally appropriate to other crops that use the same PAIs provided the application rates are corrected to the new crop. In addition, the approach used in the PDST can be applied internationally and to any PAIs with sufficient toxicity, mobility, and persistence data.

Environmental water quality monitoring aims to provide the data required for safeguarding the environment against adverse biological effects from multiple chemical contamination arising from anthropogenic diffuse emissions and point sources. Here, we integrate the experience of the international EU-funded project SOLUTIONS to shift the focus of water monitoring from a few legacy chemicals to complex chemical mixtures, and to identify relevant drivers of toxic effects. Monitoring serves a range of purposes, from control of chemical and ecological status compliance to safeguarding specific water uses, such as drinking water abstraction. Various water sampling techniques, chemical target, suspect and non-target analyses as well as an array of in vitro, in vivo and in situ bioanalytical methods were advanced to improve monitoring of water contamination. Major improvements for broader applicability include tailored sampling techniques, screening and identification techniques for a broader and more diverse set of chemicals, higher detection sensitivity, standardized protocols for chemical, toxicological, and ecological assessments combined with systematic evidence evaluation techniques. No single method or combination of methods is able to meet all divergent monitoring purposes. Current monitoring approaches tend to emphasize either targeted exposure or effect detection. Here, we argue that, irrespective of the specific purpose, assessment of monitoring results would benefit substantially from obtaining and linking information on the occurrence of both chemicals and potentially adverse biological effects. In this paper, we specify the information required to: (1) identify relevant contaminants, (2) assess the impact of contamination in aquatic ecosystems, or (3) quantify cause–effect relationships between contaminants and adverse effects. Specific strategies to link chemical and bioanalytical information are outlined for each of these distinct goals. These strategies have been developed and explored using case studies in the Danube and Rhine river basins as well as for rivers of the Iberian Peninsula. Current water quality assessment suffers from biases resulting from differences in approaches and associated uncertainty analyses. While exposure approaches tend to ignore data gaps (i.e., missing contaminants), effect-based approaches penalize data gaps with increased uncertainty factors. This integrated work suggests systematic ways to deal with mixture exposures and combined effects in a more balanced way, and thus provides guidance for future tailored environmental monitoring. © 2019, The Author(s). ; Funding text #1 1 UFZ‑Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Permoserstr. 15, 04318 Leipzig, Germany. 2 Institute for Environmental Research, RWTH Aachen University, 52074 Aachen, Germany. 3 Office of Research and Development, Atlantic Ecology Division, United States Environmental Protection Agency, Narragansett, RI, USA. 4 Center for Applied Geoscience, Eberhard Karls Uni‑ versity Tübingen, 72074 Tübingen, Germany. 5 Alterra, Wageningen University and Research Centre, P.O. Box 47, 6700 AA Wageningen, The Netherlands. 6 Environment and Climate Change Canada, Burlington, ON, Canada. 7 Sophus Bauditz Vej 19 B, 2800 Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark. 8 Water and Soil Quality Research Group, Institute of Environmental Assessment and Water Research (IDAEA‑ CSIC), Jordi Girona 18‑26, 08034 Barcelona, Spain. 9 Unité d'Ecotoxicologie Funding text #2 The SOLUTIONS Project is supported by the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7‑ENV‑2013) of the European Union under Grant Agreement No. 603437. G.A. Umbuzeiro thanks FAPESP Projects 2013/16956‑6 and 2015/24758‑5. We like to thank all partners for their continued efforts in making this project a success story. Funding text #3 The SOLUTIONS Project is supported by the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7‑ENV‑704 2013) of the European Union under Grant Agreement No. 603437. G.A. Umbuzeiro thanks 705 FAPESP Projects 2013/16956‑6 and 2015/24758‑5. ; Peer reviewed