Combining Polar Organic Chemical Integrative Samplers (POCIS) with Toxicity Testing on Microalgae to Evaluate the Impact of Herbicide Mixtures in Surface Waters.

Pesticide risk assessment within the European Union Water Framework Directive is largely deficient in the assessment of the actual exposure and chemical mixture effects. Pesticide contamination, in particular herbicidal loading, has been shown to exert pressure on surface waters. Such pollution can have direct impact on autotrophic species, as well as indirect impacts on freshwater communities through primary production degradation.

Geochemical matrix differently affects the response of internal standards and target analytes for pesticide transformation products measured in groundwater samples.

Electrospray ionization (ESI) is the most common technique in liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS-MS) allowing for sensitive detection of polar compounds with online water concentration. The technique is popular in groundwater monitoring programs and has permitted great progress in the detection and quantification of polar pesticide transformation products (TP) in recent years. However, ESI is also known to be prone to matrix effects.

Isotope fractionation of micropollutants during large-volume extraction: heads-up from a critical method evaluation for atrazine, desethylatrazine and 2,6-dichlorobenzamide at low ng/L concentrations in groundwater.

Micropollutants are frequently detected in groundwater. Thus, the question arises whether they are eliminated by natural attenuation so that pesticide degradation would be observed with increasing residence time in groundwater. Conventional analytical approaches rely on parent compound/metabolite ratios.

Quantitative use of passive sampling data to derive a complete seasonal sequence of flood event loads: a case study for maize herbicides in Luxembourg.

Pesticides are the class of compounds with the most dynamic behaviour in their surface water occurrence: their episodic release to surface waters is closely related to the date of application and the following weather conditions and poses substantial challenges to monitoring in order to yield accurate mass transfer figures. Moreover, pesticide use, dose and time of application are largely unknown catchment wide and pose an essential problem as to the realism and reliability of pesticide fate modelling as well as accurate farmer counselling. Spatially and temporally highly resolved monitoring establishing pesticide sources was logistically unthinkable until the advent of passive samplers which combine ease of deployment and continuous sampling.

An immission perspective of emerging micropollutant pressure in Luxembourgish surface waters: A simple evaluation scheme for wastewater impact assessment.

While wastewater treatment plants have been identified as the most prominent source of emerging micropollutants in surface waters, prediction of their ambient concentrations remains a challenge. This is due to the variability of loads entering individual treatment plants and of the elimination capacity by the latter as well as potential attenuation in the river network. Although geospatially detailed models exist, they suffer from the same data input uncertainties.

Breakthrough dynamics of s-metolachlor metabolites in drinking water wells: Transport pathways and time to trend reversal.

We present the results of a two years study on the contamination of the Luxembourg Sandstone aquifer by metolachlor-ESA and metolachlor-OXA, two major transformation products of s-metolachlor. The aim of the study was twofold: (i) assess whether elevated concentrations of both transformation products (up to 1000 ng/l) were due to fast flow breakthough events of short duration or the signs of a contamination of the entire aquifer and (ii) estimate the time to trend reversal once the parent compound was withdrawn from the market. These two questions were addressed by a combined use of groundwater monitoring, laboratory experiments and numerical simulations of the fate of the degradation products in the subsurface.

Estimating Pesticide Attenuation From Water Dating and the Ratio of Metabolite to Parent Compound.

Although pesticides are primarily degraded in the topsoil, significant attenuation can be expected in groundwater systems where the transit time of pesticides usually are orders of magnitude longer than in the soil. Because degradation and transport processes in the subsurface take place at time scales of months to years or even decades, direct measurements of natural attenuation are hampered by practical and logistical limitations (for instance the limited duration of sampling or a correct estimation of the pesticide flux into groundwater). Indirect methods such as measuring the changes in the ratio of degradation product to parent compound as a function of transit time in the aquifer, along a flow line provide a possible alternative.

A case-study on the accuracy of mass balances for xenobiotics in full-scale wastewater treatment plants.

Removal efficiencies of micropollutants in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are usually evaluated from mass balance calculations using a small number of observations drawn from short sampling campaigns. Since micropollutant loads can vary greatly in both influent and effluent and reactor tanks exhibit specific hydraulic residence times, these short-term approaches are particularly prone to yield erroneous removal values. A detailed investigation of micropollutant transit times at full-scale and on how this affects mass balancing results was still lacking.

Xenobiotic removal efficiencies in wastewater treatment plants: residence time distributions as a guiding principle for sampling strategies.

The effect of mixing regimes and residence time distribution (RTD) on solute transport in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) is well understood in environmental engineering. Nevertheless, it is frequently neglected in sampling design and data analysis for the investigation of polar xenobiotic removal efficiencies in WWTPs. Most studies on the latter use 24-h composite samples in influent and effluent.