The Impact of Pesticides - Academy Publish

and bioaccumulation potential is what allowed obtaining more integrated prioritylevels for the studied environment. On the other hand, the system could allow, forother pesticides, estimating the limit concentrations that would trigger hazardoussituations for a bather or aquatic biota, which could be used as an early warningsystem.CONCLUSIONSTo predict the overall environmental hazard of Del Azul creek, a screening riskbased index called DelAzulPestRisk was developed, based on an index of thebibliography. It was based on an equation function of the toxicological health riskfor bathing (considering the aggregated exposure to the accidental intake and dermalcontact to the water for a 10 years old child) and the ecological risk (based ontoxicological data of two representative species of the aquatic biota, a crustacean –Daphnia sp. – and a fish –Cyprinus carpio), and several pesticides characteristicsthat indicate their environmental fate and transport (bioaccumulation in biota andpersistence in water compartment).The pesticides determined in the Del Azul creek water samples were insecticides (α-HCH, β-HCH, δ-HCH, γ-HCH, δ–Chlordane, Aldrin, Chlorpyrifos, Cypermethrin,Endosulfan, Endosulfan Sulphate and Heptachlor) and herbicides (2,4 D,Acetochlor, and Glyphosate).The results show that only Cypermethrin has an index value indicating a significantlevel of environmental hazard because of the potential toxicological impact toaquatic biota in addition to its characteristics of high half-life in the compartmentand the bioaccumulation potential. However, the model managed to highlight it,though it is neither the most toxic to humans or biota considering its toxicologicalreference values, nor the one that possesses the greatest persistence or greatestbioaccumulation potential.The described approach may provide a tool for the comparative study of the overallenvironmental hazard of the pesticides for surface water.ACKNOWLEDGMENTSThis work was supported by funds from the Universidad Nacional del Centro de laProvincia de Buenos Aires (UNCPBA), the Comisión de Investigaciones Científicasde la Provincia de Buenos Aires (CIC) and the Agencia Nacional de PromociónCientífica y Tecnológica (ANPCyT, PID 452). We thank Taylor and FrancisPublishing Co. for allowing the use of figures and tables from Peluso et al, 2011b.AcademyPublish.org - The Impact of Pesticides259