The occurrence of acid herbicides concentrations in some environmental samples from Romania

Abstract

Herbicides are used worldwide in order to treat the agricultural crops, garden soil or aquatic cultures. Due to known environmental effects as aquatic organism toxicity (mortality, growth inhibition, population abundance) or fast soil percolation to groundwater, accompanied by low degradation in water treatment stations, these compounds are usually monitored in developing countries. Based on accessible reported data, it is little known about the amount of herbicides uses in Romania, and not at all about, the target compounds concentrations in different environmental sectors. The few studies that analyzed the organic contamination of Danube River and its major tributaries identify hundreds of ng/L of persistent pollutants as pesticides, pharmaceuticals or musk fragrances. This paper investigates the occurrence of four acidic herbicides (triclopyr, fluroxypyr, dicamba and clopyralid) in Romania’s Tarnava River bank and in some surface waters upstream and downstream the Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTPs).