Abstract
The intensive use of pesticides such as herbicides, insecticides, fungicides and acaricides has been lead to ubiquitous contamination, being present not only in soils, water bodies and/or crops, but also in the atmosphere. Considering the massive amount of pesticides employed globally, together to their persistence, this may be an important concern regarding air quality and human health worldwide. In the present study we developed a green sensitive sample preparation method for determination of nine organophosphates, two pyrethroids, one carbamate, and one strobirulin in PM2.5 collected in a tropical coastal area in the Southern Hemisphere for the first time. Extraction of PM2.5 sample masses, as low as 206 µg, were performed in a miniaturized device using 500 μL of a mixture containing 18% acetonitrile in dichloromethane followed by sonication for 23 minutes and injection into GC-MS. A total of 12 pesticides were identified and quantified successfully, among them, eight banned pesticides. A risk assessment exposure and cancer risk for possible carcinogenic pesticides (bifenthrin, malathion, parathion and permethrin) were performed for exposure of adults, children and infants. Hazard Quotient and cumulative exposure for organophosphate and pyrethroid pesticides were less than 1, showing that cumulative risk is within acceptable range.
Highlights
The intensive use of pesticides such as herbicides, insecticides, fungicides and acaricides has been lead to ubiquitous contamination, being present in soils, water bodies and/or crops, and in the atmosphere
After this test we verified that the microextraction device (Whatman Mini-UniPrep G2) resulted in better results, with less interfering compounds as shown in the chromatogram in Supplementary Figure 1
The procedure was applied in the determination of organophosphate pesticides, pyrethroids, carbamates and estrubirulins in 41 samples collected at three different sites of Todos os Santos Bay
Summary
The intensive use of pesticides such as herbicides, insecticides, fungicides and acaricides has been lead to ubiquitous contamination, being present in soils, water bodies and/or crops, and in the atmosphere. Considering the amount of pesticides employed globally (estimated to be 1 to 2.5 million tons of active pesticides ingredients)[6, 7], together to their persistence in the environment and bioaccumulative characteristics[8], this may be an important concern regarding air quality and human health worldwide. Consumption became an alarming case of public health Because of their toxicities and prolonged exposition (either voluntarily or not) of humans to these compounds, this is directly linked to a higher cancer incidence[12], and is suspected to cause disruption of the endocrine system[7], and to affect the central nervous system, being a risk for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases[13,14,15]. Some pesticides such as carbofuran, demeton-O, diazinon, disulfoton, ethion, fenthion, parathion, permethrin and sulfotep are currently prohibited by the European Union (EU) but many of them are still used, especially in Brazil
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