In recent years, various environmental issues have aroused a concern on the pollution of pesticides in rivers and in their various intercompartments. Multiple residues of pesticides discharged from industries or as a result of extensive use of agrochemicals in agriculture have been monitored. These pesticide residues contaminate the river ecosystem and its intercompartments such as sediments, and aquatic biota, and make it harmful to humans when they contaminate food and drinking water. The pesticide contamination in water, sediments, and aquatic biota has been reported to be beyond the acceptable range. The most commonly found pesticides are organochlorine, namely, dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, hexachlorocyclohexane, endosulfan, heptachlor, lindane, dieldrin, aldrin, endrin, and others. The paper discusses the general description, classification, and toxicity of pesticides; it also aims to create public awareness among people and appraise them with various alternate methods to combat the problem of pesticide contamination. An attempt has also been made to elucidate the findings of various works on pesticides in aquatic system and to highlight the challenging aspects of pesticide contamination, which have not attracted the attention of investigators yet.

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A simple model to calculate the total ionization cross sections of a molecule due to electron impact has been obtained by combining the useful features of the two previous models given by Kim and Rudd (1994 Phys. Rev. A 50 3954) and Saksena et al (1997 Physica B 233 201, 1997 Int. J. Mass Spectrom. Ion Process. 171 L1). It is shown that the Bethe and Mott cross section terms obtained by Kim and Rudd are the approximate forms of the present expressions. The calculated cross sections for the CH4 molecule are in satisfactory agreement with a number of experimental data over a wide energy range varying from 15 eV to 2.7 MeV. Although the present Bethe and Mott cross sections in the binary-encounter-Bethe model are different from the corresponding cross sections of Kim et al (1997 J. Chem. Phys. 106 1026), the total ionization cross sections obtained in these two investigations are very close to each other. For impact energies greater than about 40 eV the present cross sections are in good accord with those given by the Saksena model. However, at lower energies the present cross sections are greater than those given by the above model and are in better agreement with the experimental data. The present value of the collisional parameter is about 10% lower than the experimental value of Reike and Prepejchal (1972 Phys. Rev. A 6 1507).

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The study was carried out to access the fluoride, boron, and nitrate concentrations in ground water samples of different villages in Indira Gandhi, Bhakra, and Gang canal catchment area of northwest Rajasthan, India. Rural population, in the study site, is using groundwater for drinking and irrigation purposes, without any quality test of water. All water samples (including canal water) were contaminated with fluoride. Fluoride, boron, and nitrate were observed in the ranges of 0.50-8.50, 0.0-7.73, and 0.0-278.68 mg/l, respectively. Most of the water samples were in the categories of fluoride 1.50 mg/l, of boron 2.0-4.0 mg/l, and of nitrate < 45 mg/l. There was no industrial pollution in the study site; hence, availability of these compounds in groundwater was due to natural reasons and by the use of chemical fertilizers.