Use of Postregistration Monitoring Data to Evaluate the Ecotoxicological Risks of Pesticides to Surface Waters: A Case Study with Chlorpyrifos in the Iberian Peninsula

Abstract

Chemical monitoring data sets such as those provided by the implementation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) offer opportunities to evaluate the ecological risks of pesticides under large spatiotemporal scales and to evaluate the protectiveness of the current prospective risk‐assessment framework. As a case study, we used the monitoring data set for the insecticide chlorpyrifos to perform a probabilistic risk assessment for Iberian surface‐water ecosystems. The specific objectives of the study were 1) to assess the occurrence of chlorpyrifos in relation to different agricultural production land uses, 2) to assess the spatiotemporal variation in the exceedance of the European WFD short‐ and long‐term environmental quality standards (maximum allowable concentration environmental quality standard [MAC‐EQS] and annual average [AA] EQS), and 3) to perform a probabilistic risk assessment for freshwater invertebrates. A database that contains chlorpyrifos concentrations from 14 600 surface water samples taken between 2012 and 2017 in the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) was analyzed, and chlorpyrifos was detected in 21% of these samples. The MAC‐EQS was exceeded in 2% of the cases, whereas the AA‐EQS was exceeded in 18% of the cases. The majority of the exceedances took place in the littoral areas of the eastern and southeastern parts of the Iberian Peninsula, particularly in areas with dominant citrus production during late spring, late summer, and autumn. The present study indicates unacceptable risks posed by chlorpyrifos to Iberian surface waters over the study period, although it was approved for use in Europe. The present study supports the need to perform further postregistration monitoring assessments with other pesticides following similar approaches, which can help to identify possible pesticide‐misuse practices and improvements of the prospective risk‐assessment framework. Environ Toxicol Chem 2021;40:500–512. © 2020 SETAC

Salinity Alters Toxicity of Commonly Used Pesticides in a Model Euryhaline Fish Species (Menidia beryllina)

“…Bifenthrin is often found in the San Francisco Bay and surrounding watershed up to 9.9 ng/L and has been found in estuaries within China up to 291 ng/L, both of which encompass the LC 10 values [59,60]. In the USA and globally, chlorpyrifos has been detected within estuaries and surface waters up to 96.0 µg/L, concentrations that encompass the LC 10 values found in this study [61][62][63]. Myclobutanil has also been detected in global estuarine surface waters at levels close to the LC 10 values found in this study [64].…”

Occurrence, Distribution, and Risk Assessment of Organophosphorus Pesticides in the Aquatic Environment of the Sele River Estuary, Southern Italy

“…Particularly, the most used OPPs in the Sele River Plain were chlorpyrifos and dimethoate, with about 27 and 4 tons sold per year, respectively [ 50 ]. Many studies reported a high predominance of chlorpyrifos and dimethoate in several areas of southern Europe [ 6 , 51 , 52 ], including Italy [ 53 , 54 , 55 ], which led to them being identified as hazardous substances for water biodiversity in Mediterranean ecosystems [ 51 , 56 , 57 ]. Therefore, according to the last agriculture census by ISTAT (2010), in line also with the current European regulations, such as the Water Framework Directive (WFD) [ 58 ], and considering the current bibliography [ 3 , 5 , 10 , 16 , 23 , 27 , 30 , 34 , 59 ], the OPPs investigated in the study area were: diazinon, dimethoate, malathion, chlorpyrifos, pirimiphos-methyl, fenitrothion, methidathion, tolclofos-methyl, and parathion ( Table 1 ).…”

Eutrophic status influences the impact of pesticide mixtures and predation on Daphnia pulex populations

“…Both pesticides are included in the list of priority substances of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) (EC, 2011) and are highly relevant for European surface waters as well as globally due to their widespread use and ecological risks (Arenas-Sánchez et al, 2019;Huang et al, 2020;Rico et al, 2021). As an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor, chlorpyrifos disturbs the signal transmission in the nervous system, causing impairment in mobility (Sharma et al, 2012) and eventually mortality, particularly on aquatic arthropods such as D. pulex (Cuppen et al, 2002;Daam et al, 2008).…”