Pesticides residues can occur in ground and surface waters, and potentially react with chemicals used for water disinfection treatments, such as chlorine. This can lead to the formation of unknown reaction products, which can be more toxic and/or persistent than the active substances themselves, and therefore become a potential risk for human health and environment. Thus, in the framework of the EU Regulation 1107/2009, the identification of these by-products and their potential risk should be assessed. Within the European Food Risk Assessment (EU-FORA) Fellowship Programme, the fellow studied the behaviour of herbicides belonging to the families of imidazolinones and sulfonylureas in waters treated with chlorine disinfectants. Due to their physicochemical properties, these herbicides are susceptible of reaching natural waters. In fact, some of them have been detected in water monitoring programmes. During the experimental part of the present work programme, reactions between the active substances and the most used chlorine disinfecting reactants (hypochlorite and chloramines) were performed. Degradation kinetic parameters such as half-lives and degradation constants were calculated. Results showed that herbicide degradation was both pH and chlorine/chloramines concentration dependent. In order to identify the degradation by-products, high-resolution mass spectrometry experiments were performed, and a possible route of formation of these compounds was proposed. Finally, their risk assessment was carried out by using tox/ecotoxicological properties determined by QSAR methodology and FOCUS modelling for hazard and exposure assessment, respectively. These results will contribute to the definition of a risk assessment scheme for pesticides by-products potentially occurring in drinking water.
Keywords: FOCUS; QSAR; chlorine; degradation products; drinking water; pesticides; risk assessment.
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