Monitoring and environmental risk assessment of agricultural fungicide and insecticides in water, sediment from Kumkale Plain, Çanakkale-Turkey

Abstract

This study was conducted to assess pesticide residues in 34 water and sediment samples taken from Kumkale Plain of Çanakkale-Turkey. Residue analyses were performed with the use of Quick-Easy-Cheap-Efficient-Rugged-Safe (QuEChERS)-liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) procedure. For method verification, blank sediment and water samples were spiked at two limits of quantification (LOQ) levels of the pesticides. Overall recovery was 81.66% for sediment and 91.50% for water samples. In sediment samples, chlorpyrifos-M had the highest concentration, pyridaben was encountered in the majority of the samples (15 samples) and the highest number of pesticides (35) was seen in sample no. s13. In water samples, methoxyfenozide had the greatest concentration, metalaxyl was encountered in the highest number of samples (three samples) and the highest number of pesticide (8) was seen in sample no.w13. Sample no. s13 and w13 were taken from around the fountain basin. Pyraclostrobin and chlorantraniliprole residues exceeded the national limits set for water. In terms of hazard quotient (HQ), pesticides in sediment and waters were found to be safe. Despite the safe nature of pesticide on samples, greater attention has been paid on toxicity of the residues. It was concluded that authorities should put strict regulations on agrochemicals to reduce health risks of these chemicals.

Keywords:

• Pesticide residues
• method verification
• QuEChERS
• health risk assessment

Acknowledgments

This study presents the partial results of master’s thesis of Zübeyde Nur Top. The authors wish to acknowledge technical staff of Çanakkale Food Control Directorate–Pesticide Residue Laboratory for LC-MS/MS analyses. Thanks are also extended to Prof. Dr. Zeki Gokalp (Certified English Translator) for his critical reading and through syntactic corrections of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.