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Dissipation, residue, dietary, and ecological risk assessment of atrazine in apples, grapes, tea, and their soil

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Abstract

Atrazine is one of the most used herbicides in China. It is a persistent organic pollutant but has been widely used on Chinese farmlands for a long time. To assess its dietary and ecological risks to human and environment, in this study, atrazine residues were extracted with acetonitrile and then plant samples were detected with gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and soil samples were determined with gas chromatography coupled with nitrogen-phosphorus detector (GC-NPD). The limit of quantification (LOQ) of the method was 0.01 mg/kg for all matrices. The recoveries ranged from 82.0 to 105.4% for plant samples and 75.6 to 85.6% for soil samples. The final residues of atrazine in all plant samples were lower than LOQ. Dietary risk assessment suggested that under good agricultural practices (GAP) conditions, intake of atrazine from apples, grapes, and tea would exhibit an acceptably low health risk on consumers. However, the final residues of atrazine in soil samples were <0.01–9.2 mg/kg, and the half-lives were 2.0–9.1 days. Based on the species sensitivity distribution (SSD) model, the potential affected fraction (PAF) of atrazine in soil samples ranges from 0.01 to 65.8%. Atrazine residues in 43.1% soil samples were higher than 0.11 mg/kg, which was the hazardous concentration for 5% of species (HC5) of atrazine in soil. These results suggested that the ecological risks of atrazine in apples, grapes, and tea garden soil would exhibit a high risk on environmental species even under the same GAP conditions. This study could provide guidance for comprehensive risk assessment of atrazine properly used in apple, grape, and tea gardens.

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Prof. Fuliu Xu from Peking University and associate Prof. Wei He from China University of Geosciences for your guidance and help on the pesticide ecological risk assessment methods by the soft of Species Sensitivity Distribution based on Bayesian Inference (BITSSD).

Data and materials availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. The raw data of atrazine in soil, the SSD risk assessment data of ReWeibull, and the toxicity data of atrazine have been provided as the supplementary material.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31501667, 51772289) and the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2016YFD0201200, 2016YFD0201207).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Integrated Management of Pest Insects and Rodents, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Longfei Yuan, Yida Chai, Congdi Li, Zenglong Chen, Li Li & Wei Li

  2. School of Future Technology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 101408, China

    Congdi Li & Yujian He

  3. Institute of Crop Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China

    Rong Liu

  4. School of Agriculture, Yangtze University, Jingzhou, 434025, China

    Yida Chai

Authors
  1. Longfei Yuan
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  2. Yida Chai
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  3. Congdi Li
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  4. Rong Liu
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  5. Zenglong Chen
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  6. Li Li
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  7. Wei Li
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  8. Yujian He
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Contributions

LY: Experimental design and writing.

YC: Data analysis and software.

CL: Method development validation and writing.

RL: Manuscript reviewing and language editing.

ZC: Manuscript reviewing and language editing.

LL: Field experiment and sample preparation.

WL: Field experiment and sample preparation.

YH: Experimental supervision and manuscript reviewing.

All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Longfei Yuan or Yujian He.

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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Responsible Editor: Lotfi Aleya

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Yuan, L., Chai, Y., Li, C. et al. Dissipation, residue, dietary, and ecological risk assessment of atrazine in apples, grapes, tea, and their soil. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 35064–35072 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-13133-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-13133-z

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