PARENT SESSION

1H a/b/c - Pesticides, pharmaceuticals, perfluoroalkylated substances, antibiotics
Poster Hall
8:30 AM - Wednesday, 30 April 2003
Chair: de Voogt, P.¹, ¹
Co-chair: Purdy, R.², Pluecken, U.³, Koerdel, W.⁴, Tolls, J.⁵, Kümmerer, K.⁶, ^{2 3 4 5 6}

(WEP/42) Occurrence of pesticides in the rain in the vinicultural area of Trier.

Bierl, Reinhard¹, De Rossi, Chiara¹, ¹ University of Trier, Trier, Germany, Germany

ABSTRACT- The increased use of pesticides demands insistently a deeper knowledge of the mechanisms and magnitude of pesticide movement after their application. Once in the atmosphere, pesticides can be transported over varying distances downwind of the target, can be transformed and finally deposited. Deposition by precipitation has turned out as an important path of atmospheric input of anthropogenic chemicals to water bodies. A two-year monitoring study was carried out in the area of Trier, one of the main centres of the vinicultural area of the Moselle-Saar-Ruwer (South-west Germany), where pesticides, among them many fungicides, are widely used. Rain samples were weekly collected, from May 2001 till September 2002, at 8 sites. Different classes of pesticides were investigated and a specific attention was paid to fungicides because of their high agricultural use in the area. Sampling sites were selected in order to evaluate the dispersion of these pollutants in relation to their main sources, therefore urban sites were chosen as well as industrial and rural sites. Fungicides like tebuconazole, fludioxonil and kresoxim-methyl showed high spatial variations, a fact that is expected where local emission sources must be taken into account. On the other hand, the herbicide atrazine did not present such differences among the stations. The use of atrazine has been banned in Germany since 1991, it is therefore expected that its occurrence in the rain may be a result of atmospheric transport rather than local use. The temporal trends and the similar concentration levels of this substance measured at the different sites seems to confirm this hypothesis. Among the investigated insecticides only methyl-parathion and ethyl-parathion could be detected.

Key words: rain, pesticides, precipitation, organic pollutants