Screening 31 endocrine-disrupting pesticides in water and surface sediment samples from Beijing Guanting reservoir
Introduction
Endocrine disruptors are ubiquitous environmental contaminants found in a variety of products, such as pesticides, wood preservatives, paints and plastics as well as occurring naturally in some plants. It is hypothesized that they can cause adverse effects by interfering in some way with the body’s hormones or chemical messengers and may induce a broad spectrum of biochemical and toxic responses at low environmentally relevant dose (Colborn et al., 1996). Their potential health effects include reproductive disorders, cancer and impaired development (Hileman, 1994, Colborn and Smolen, 1996, Turusov et al., 2002, Zhou et al., 2004). Studies have suggested that some pesticides have been identified as potential or suspected endocrine disruptors. However, pesticide application safety was used to be internationally assessed by Maximum Residue Levels (MRL) based on the Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI) with a considerable safety margin. Safety assessments of pesticides do not take into account of possible endocrine disrupting properties of pesticides. Many MRLs may well be too high to exclude hormone disruption as a possible effect of being exposed to residues in food and drinking water. Studies have suggested that, unfortunately, there are no desirable methods to screen and test endocrine disruptors at present (Zhou et al., 2004). Pesticides not only can be concentrated in the environment through biogeochemical processes, but also often scavenged from the water through sorption onto suspended material and get deposited to become a part of the bottom substrate. The sediment component of aquatic ecosystems can be sunk for pesticides. Consequently, bottom sediments often become reservoirs of pesticides in the environment (Khan, 1977, Chau and Afgan, 1982). Therefore, the investigation of distribution of endocrine disrupting pesticides in water and sediment can provide a valuable record of contamination in aquatic environments (Doong et al., 2002).
Different pesticides pose varying degrees and types of risk to water quality. Some surveys of pesticide contamination in water have reported in coastal and estuarine sediments collected from Asian countries such as Vietnam, Turkey, Korea and China (Hong et al., 1999, Khim et al., 1999, Nhan et al., 1999, Doong et al., 2002, Bakan and Ariman, 2004, Zhang et al., 2004) indicating the presence of significant source of pesticides in these regions. China is the world’s second largest producer of pesticides, and a pesticide production of 260 000 tonnes was recorded in 1994 (Zhang et al., 2002a). Several studies have reported, despite the ban and restriction on the usage of some organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) since 1983 in China, the presence of elevated levels of OCPs, such as DDTs and HCHs, in seawater and coastal sediments (e.g. Zhou et al., 2001) and some river/estuarine systems (Hong et al., 1995, Chen et al., 1996, Wu et al., 1999, Zhou et al., 2000). Furthermore, DDT concentrations in marine mussels collected from China were still high, one to two orders of greater than those of other Asian countries (Nakata et al., 2002, Monirith et al., 2003, Li et al., 2001). These results suggest significant pollution sources of pesticides are present in China. However, most studies examined pesticides (such as OCPs) levels in waters, sediments from the marine environment (Qiu et al., 2004, Nakata et al., 2005), and up to now, in China, very little field monitoring data is available for the presence of environmental endocrine disrupting pesticide residues in freshwater. An understanding of the impacts of endocrine disrupting pesticides on China’s environment is therefore very limited.
The study focuses on developing a method based on a pesticide multi-residue analysis to screen endocrine disrupting pesticides in water and sediment. Some pesticides identified as potential or suspected endocrine disruptors such as α-HCH, β-HCH, γ-HCH, δ-HCH, hexachlorobenzene (HCB), aldrin, heptachlor, endosulfan, p,p′-DDD, o,p′-DDT, endrin aldehyde, endosulfan sulphate, p,p′-DDT, p,p′-DDE, methoxychlor, hepachlor epoxide, chlordane, dieldrin, endrin, dicofol, acetochlor, alachlor, metolachlor, chlorpyriphos, nitrofen, trifluralin (HEPO), cypermethrin, fenverate, deltamethrin were simultaneously determined. These pesticides were selected to be screened because they have been identified as potential pollutants in food or drinking water and also been listed as endocrine disrupting chemicals by EU or by the European Commission or US EPA (Kelce et al., 1995, US EPA, 1998, Ren and Jiang, 2001) or by the Federal Environment Agency in Germany (ENDS, 1999), and because they either are widely used in the studied area for agricultural and public purposes or are present as persistent residues of previous uses. The data would be useful to local government to renew Guanting reservoir, a Beijing municipal water supply source.
Section snippets
Study area and sampling locations
Guanting reservoir located in the northwest of Beijing is one of two main water resources for agriculture, industry and living uses of Beijing. Since Guanting reservoir has suffered from extensive pollution over the last decades (particularly in 1980s) due to runoff from non-point sources, direct dumping of waste into rivers and pollutants carried by rivers (Wang et al., 2000, Zhang et al., 2002b), Guanting reservoir has not supplied with living water for Beijing city since 1997. Particularly,
Physicochemical characteristics of sediment and water samples
Table 2 provides the basic physicochemical parameters of sediment samples collected from the Guanting reservoir. The depth of the water column above the sediment layer was between 8.5 and 1.2 m. The water content of sediments ranged from 36.1% to 71.5%. The organic matter (denoted by loss on ignition, LOI%) of sediments ranged from 3.98% to 8.49%. The maximum organic matter of the sediment samples was observed at the sampling site 7 that is located in front of a dam. Sediments with high organic
Summary
A method based on a pesticide multi-residue analysis to screen potential or suspected endocrine-disrupting pesticides in water and sediment was developed. The analyzed samples showed the presence of 31 pesticides in water and sediments from Beijing Guanting reservoir. The concentrations of pesticides in water are generally lower than the Chinese standards (in the grade 1–3 surface water) for surface water. However, values in a few sites are considerately high considering to being used as a
Acknowledgements
This study was financially supported by Ministry of Sciences and Technology, China (2003CB415005). The authors wish to thank Mr. Zhe Cao from Agilent Technologies, Beijing Environment Laboratory for helping with mass spectrometric confirmations. The authors also to thank to Dr. Xue-tong Wang and Dr. Yang-Zhao Sun for the help of sampling site.
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