Assessing the impact of pesticides on the environment

Pesticide use in agriculture can cause undesirable effects on humans and the natural environment. One of the objectives of integrated agriculture is the elimination or reduction of possible sources of environmental pollution such as pesticides. To achieve this objective, farmers need a method to assist them in estimating the environmental impact of pesticide use. This paper addresses a two-part question: what factors should be taken into consideration to assess pesticide environmental impact, and how can impact be quantified? As the environmental impact of a pesticide depends on its dispersion in the environment and on its toxicological properties, the literature on these topics is reviewed to address the first part of the question. To address the second part of the question, six recent approaches to assess the impact of pesticides on the environment are compared regarding choice, transformation and aggregation of input parameters. The use of simulation models to assess environmental impact is discussed.     

The opposing effects of bacterial activity and gas production on anaerobic TCE degradation in soil columns

This laboratory study explores the effect of growth substrate concentration on the anaerobic degradation of trichloroethylene (TCE) in sand packed columns. In all columns the growth substrate rapidly degraded to gas, that formed a separate phase. Biomass accumulated in the 0–4.8 cm section of the columns in proportion to the influent growth substrate concentration and biomass concentrations in the remaining sections of all columns were similar to the column receiving the lowest substrate concentration. Increases in growth substrate concentration up to 3030 mg-COD l⁻¹ promoted TCE degradation, but a further increase to 14 300 mg-COD l⁻¹ reduced the amount of TCE completely dechlorinated but did not affect the production of chlorinated TCE intermediates. The mathematical model developed here satisfactorily described the enhancement in TCE dehalogenation for substrate concentration up to 3030 mg-COD l⁻¹; reproducing TCE dehalogenation for 14 300 mg-COD l⁻¹ required that the moisture content used in simulation be lowered to 0.1. The study shows that volatilization of TCE can be significant and volatilization losses should be taken into account when anaerobic activity in in-situ bioremediation applications is stimulated via addition of growth substrates. An implication of the modeling simulations is that maintaining a lower, but uniform, substrate concentration over the contaminated region may lead to faster contaminant degradation.