A field tracer study of attenuation of atrazine, hexazinone and procymidone in a pumice sand aquifer.

A field tracer experiment, simulating point source contamination, was conducted to investigate attenuation and transport of atrazine, hexazinone and procymidone in a volcanic pumice sand aquifer. Preliminary laboratory incubation tests were also carried out to determine degradation rates. Field transport of the pesticides was observed to the significant under non-equilibrium conditions. Therefore, a two-region/two-site non-equilibrium transport model, N3DADE, was used for analysis of the field data. A lump reduction rate constant was used in this paper to encompass all the irreversible reduction processes (e.g. degradation, irreversible adsorption, complexation and filtration for the pesticides adsorbed into particles and colloids) which are assumed to follow a first-order rate law. Results from the field experiment suggest that (a) hexazinone was the most mobile (retardation factor R = 1.4) and underwent least mass reduction; (b) procymidone was the least mobile (R = 9.26) and underwent the greatest mass reduction; (c) the mobility of atrazine (R = 4.45) was similar to that of rhodamine WT (R = 4.10). Hence, rhodamine WT can be used to delimit the appearance of atrazine in pumice sand groundwater. Results from the incubation tests suggest that (a) hexazinone was degraded only in the mixture of groundwater and aquifer material (degradation rate constant = 4.36 x 10(-3) day-1); (b) procymidone was degraded not only in the mixture of groundwater and aquifer material (rate constant = 1.12 x 10(-2) day-1) but also in the groundwater alone (rate constant = 2.79 x 10(-2) and-1); (c) atrazine was not degraded over 57 days incubation in either the mixture of aquifer material and groundwater or the groundwater alone. Degradation rates measured in the batch tests were much lower than the total reduction rates. This suggests that not only degradation but also other irreversible processes are important in attenuating pesticides under field conditions. Hence, the use of laboratory-determined degradation rates could underestimate reduction of pesticides in field conditions.