Long-Term Persistence of Pesticides and TPs in Archived Agricultural Soil Samples and Comparison with Pesticide Application

For polar and more degradable pesticides, not many data on long-term persistence in soil under field conditions and real application practices exist. To assess the persistence of pesticides in soil, a multiple-compound screening method (log K-ow 1.7-5.5) was developed based on pressurized liquid extraction, QuEChERS and LC-HRMS. The method was applied to study 80 polar pesticides and >90 transformation products (TPs) in archived topsoil samples from the Swiss Soil Monitoring Network (NABO) from 1995 to 2008 with known pesticide application patterns. The results reveal large variations between crop type and field sites. For the majority of the sites 10-15 pesticides were identified with a detection rate of 45% at concentrations between 1 and 330 mu g/kg(dw) in soil. Furthermore, TPs were detected in 47% of the cases where the parent-compound was applied. Overall, residues of about 80% of all applied pesticides could be detected with half of these found as TPs with a persistence of more than a decade.