The impact of pesticides used at the agricultural land of the Puck commune on the environment of the Puck Bay

Grażyna Pazikowska-Sapota; Katarzyna Galer-Tatarowicz; Grażyna Dembska; Marta Wojtkiewicz; Ewelina Duljas; Stefan Pietrzak; Lidia Anita Dzierzbicka-Glowacka

doi:10.7717/peerj.8789

The impact of pesticides used at the agricultural land of the Puck commune on the environment of the Puck Bay

PeerJ. 2020 Mar 19:8:e8789. doi: 10.7717/peerj.8789. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Grażyna Pazikowska-Sapota¹, Katarzyna Galer-Tatarowicz¹, Grażyna Dembska¹, Marta Wojtkiewicz¹, Ewelina Duljas¹, Stefan Pietrzak², Lidia Anita Dzierzbicka-Glowacka³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Environment Protection, Gdynia Maritime University, Maritime Institute, Gdynia, Poland.
² Department of Water Quality, Institute of Technology and Life Sciences in Falenty, Falenty, Poland.
³ Physical Oceanography Department, Institute of Oceanology of the Polish Academy of Science, Sopot, Poland.

Abstract

Background: The Puck commune is one of the largest agricultural regions in the Pomeranian Voivodship that due to the pollution of the coastal zone negatively affects the functioning of the Puck Bay, including health of its inhabitants, and causes decrease in tourism as well as in overall economic value of the region. The objective of the undertaken study was to assess the extent of risk to the environment posed by the pesticides used in agricultural production in the coastal area of the Puck commune.

Methods: The study focused on organochlorine insecticides (DDT and its metabolites: α, β, ϒ, δ-HCH, aldrin, dieldrin, endrin, isodrine), glyphosate and its metabolite AMPA, and 309 active substances used as pesticides. Analyses were carried out using GC-MS, GC-MS/MS and LC-MS/MS techniques. The undertaken novel approach included "tracking" of a large number of substances in multiple environmental matrices (surface water, groundwater, seawater, soil, sediment and fish), along with examination of their transport routes from the pesticides application locality to the Puck Bay.

Results: Glyphosate and its metabolite AMPA, anthraquinone, boscalid, chlorpyrifos-ethyl, dimethachlor, diflufenican, difenoconazole, epoxiconazole, fluopicolide and metazachlor were found in soil samples and surface water samples collected from drainage ditches surrounding the studied agricultural plots. In the samples of seawater and fish taken from the Puck Bay no studied pesticides were found.

Keywords: Active substances; Agricultural land; Fish; Groundwater; Pesticides; Puck Bay; Sediments; Surface runoff.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the project “Modelling of the impact of the agricultural holdings and land-use structure on the quality of inland and coastal waters of the Baltic Sea set up on the example of the Municipality of Puck region—Integrated info-prediction Web Service WaterPUCK” funded by the National Centre for Research and Development within the BIOSTRATEG III program No. BIOSTRATEG3/343927/3/NCBR/2017. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.