Pesticides in Our Water Supply
From the National Library of Medicine
An average of 2 million tons of pesticides is used each year globally to confront weeds, insects and pests
The primary pesticide consuming countries are: China, the USA, Argentina, India, Japan, Canada, Brazil, France, Italy and Thailand.
Based on the National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA), pesticides are found more often in surface waters than groundwater, being 25 pesticides detected more than 10% of the time in surface waters and 2% of the time in groundwater of various land-use setting in agricultural, urban and mixed land use.
This proves that the occurrence of pesticides in surface waters is prevalent because of the direct and rapid overland mobilization of pesticides via surface runoff.
According to the investigation, the pesticides that occurred most frequently in the streams and groundwater are the five agricultural herbicides—atrazine with its degradate, deethylatrazine, metolachlor, cyanazine, alachlor and acetochlor, the five non-agricultural herbicides—simazine, prometon, tebuthiuron, 2,4-D and diuron, as well as the 3 most extensive use insecticide—diazinon, chlorpyrifos and carbaryl
