Temporal scales of pesticide exposure and risks in German small streams

Abstract

Following agricultural application, pesticides can enter streams through runoff during rain events. However, little information is available on the temporal dynamics of pesticide toxicity during the main application period. We investigated pesticide application and large scale in-stream monitoring data from 101 agricultural catchments obtained from a Germany-wide monitoring from April to July in 2018 and 2019. We analysed temporal patterns of pesticide application, in-stream toxicity and exceedances of regulatory acceptable concentrations (RAC) for over 70 pesticides. On a monthly scale from April to July, toxicity to invertebrates and algae/aquatic plants (algae) obtained with event-driven samples (EDS) was highest in May/June. The peak of toxicity towards invertebrates and algae coincided with the peaks of insecticide and herbicide application. Future monitoring, i.e. related to the Water Framework Directive, could be limited to time periods of highest pesticide applications on a seasonal scale. On a daily scale, toxicity to invertebrates from EDS exceeded those of grab samples collected within one day after rainfall by a factor of 3.7. Within two to three days, toxicity in grab samples declined compared to EDS by a factor of ten for invertebrates, and a factor of 1.6 for algae. Thus, toxicity to invertebrates declined rapidly within 1 day after a rainfall event, whereas toxicity to algae remained elevated for up to 4 days. For six pesticides, RAC exceedances could only be detected in EDS. The exceedances of RACs coincided with the peaks in pesticide application. Based on EDS, we estimated that pesticide exposure would need a 37-fold reduction of all analysed pesticides, to meet the German environmental target to keep RAC exceedances below 1 % of EDS. Overall, our study shows a high temporal variability of exposure on a monthly but also daily scale to individual pesticides that can be linked to their period of application and related rain events.

Keywords: Agricultural pesticide pollution; Event-driven sampling (EDS); Pesticide application; Regulatory acceptable concentration (RAC); Surface water monitoring; Water Framework Directive.