Screening the leaching tendency of pesticides applied in the Amu Darya Basin (Uzbekistan).
The Amu Darya River, one of the most important water resources for Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, was declared a World Disaster Zone in 1991. The great increase in irrigation and the use of pesticides has led to both a lack of water and drinking water contamination. The aim of the present study, part of an EU project on water management guidelines, was to evaluate the leachability of 71 organic pesticides commonly employed in the area, and to assess compounds that could potentially contaminate the river and impair drinking water quality. A multivariate approach is proposed for the pesticide screening, condensing information from different environmental partition indexes (GUS, "modified LEACH", LIN) into a single ranking, the Global Leachability Index (GLI). For a selected data set in water medium this super-index identifies three classes with a risk potential for pesticide leachability, and allows the selection of a small number of chemicals for an analytical survey.
Department of Structural and Functional Biology, University of Insubria, via J.H. Dunant 3, 21100 Varese, Italy. ester.papa@uninsurbia.it
Ester
E
Papa
Sara
S
Castiglioni
Paola
P
Gramatica
Victor
V
Nikolayenko
Odil
O
Kayumov
Davide
D
Calamari
D004784:Environmental Monitoring; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D010575:Pesticides / Q000032:analysis* / Q000737:chemistry; D018570:Risk Assessment; D045483:Rivers; D012989:Soil Pollutants / Q000032:analysis*; D012995:Solubility; D014610:Uzbekistan; D014874:Water Pollutants, Chemical / Q000032:analysis*; D014881:Water Supply
D010575:Pesticides; D012989:Soil Pollutants; D014874:Water Pollutants, Chemical