Low cost monitoring of glyphosate in surface waters using the ELISA method: An evaluation

Concerns have been raised in the scientific community regarding the environmental implications of a dramatic increase in corn-based ethanol production and associated increases in pesticide use. The use of glyphosate, a broad-spectrum herbicide, for corn production has increased considerably in recent years in Canada and the United States. The cost of measuring concentrations of organic contaminants in the environment using traditional wet chemistry methods can be prohibitive; especially when large numbers of samples are required to quantify the spatial and temporal variability in contaminant concentrations. The goal of our study was to evaluate a cost-effective method to measure glyphosate concentrations in surface waters. The reliability of enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) results was evaluated against liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry, and linear regression results for 30 water samples from urban watersheds revealed a strong relationship (R-2 = 0.88). These results suggest that ELISA methods, used in conjunction with traditional methods, represent a cost-effective approach to enhance the spatial and temporal resolution of a water quality monitoring study. Additionally, we measured a total of 739 surface water samples from over 150 sampling locations throughout Ontario using ELISA from April to October 2007. Concentrations exceeded the method detection limit of 0.1 mu g/L in 33% of the samples, with a maximum concentration of 12.0 mu g/L. Glyphosate showed a bimodal temporal distribution with peak concentrations occurring in late spring/early summer and fall, and did not exceed the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment (CCME) guideline for the protection of aquatic life (65 mu g/L) in any of the samples.