Bioavailability of xenobiotics in the soil environment.

It is often presumed that all chemicals in soil are available to microorganisms, plant roots, and soil fauna via dermal exposure. Subsequent bioaccumulation through the food chain may then result in exposure to higher organisms. Using the presumption of total availability, national governments reduce environmental threshold levels of regulated chemicals by increasing guideline safety margins.

Altered pesticide use on transgenic crops and the associated general impact from an environmental perspective.

The large-scale commercial cultivation of transgenic crops has undergone a steady increase since their introduction 10 years ago. Most of these crops bear introduced traits that are of agronomic importance, such as herbicide or insect resistance. These traits are likely to impact upon the use of pesticides on these crops, as well as the pesticide market as a whole.

Residual and contact herbicide transport through field lysimeters via preferential flow.

Usage of glyphosate [N-(phosphonomethyl)-glycine] and glufosinate [2-amino-4-(hydroxy-methylphosphinyl)butanoic acid] may reduce the environmental impact of agriculture because they are more strongly sorbed to soil and may be less toxic than many of the residual herbicides they replace. Preferential flow complicates the picture, because due to this process, even strongly sorbed chemicals can move quickly to ground water. Therefore, four monolith lysimeters (8.

Foliar and soil deposition of pesticide sprays in peanuts and their washoff and runoff under simulated worst-case rainfall conditions.

There are few studies that relate the timing and amounts of pesticide washoff from plant foliage during rainfall to runoff losses at the edge of the field. We hypothesized that foliar deposits, if washed onto the soil slowly during rainfall, may then undergo less leaching during the period of infiltration that occurs prior to soil saturation and runoff, thus exhibiting larger runoff losses than pesticides on/in the soil at the beginning of rain. We measured the runoff of ethalfluralin, metolachlor, chlorothalonil, and rhodamine WT dye using simulated rainfall on 450 m2 mesoplots planted in peanut.