AGROCHEMICAL IMPACTS ON HUMAN AND ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH: MECHANISMS AND MITIGATION

• Sponsoring Institution: National Institute of Food and Agriculture
• Project Status: ACTIVE
• Funding Source: HATCH
• Reporting Frequency: Annual
• Accession No.: 1024705
• Multistate No.: W-4045
• Project Start Date: Oct 1, 2020
• Project End Date: Sep 30, 2025
• Program Code: [(N/A)]- (N/A)

Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
G022 MCCARTY HALL
GAINESVILLE,FL 32611

Performing Department
Agricultural and Biological Engineering

Non Technical Summary
By the mid-century, the human population is predicted to reach nine billion. While there will be greater pressure to develop sustainable systems, agrochemical use will remain a cornerstone for protecting crop yield and thereby helping to meet demands for increased food production. Inevitably, a portion of the applied agrochemicals may be lost to the surrounding environment potentially adversely affecting human and environmental health. Thus, assuring sustainable crop production systems and human-environmental protection will pose increasingly difficult challenges. To minimize risks to humans and to ecosystems, environmentally sound crop and public health protection will require keen understanding of traditional as well as emerging approaches for the study of fate and effects of agrochemicals along with sound mitigation strategies. In the future it will be of equal importance investigating beneficial impacts of agrochemicals juxtaposed to adverse impacts.Continuation of the W-4045 multistate research project will enable collaborations that go beyond the scope of any individual state AES or USDA-ARS unit for advancing and transferring science to agricultural, regulatory stakeholders, and the public who require solutions to complex human and environmental health concerns. FL participation will focus on improving the scientificunderstanding of pesticide runoff and trappingprocesses through dense vegetation, and refining and appying the numerical model VFSMOD for use in quantitative mitigation in the regulatory risk analysis and management processess.

Animal Health Component

33%

Research Effort Categories

Basic

34%

Applied

33%

Developmental

33%

Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)	Subject of Investigation (SOI)	Field of Science (FOS)	Percent
133	0210	2050	100%

Knowledge Area
133 - Pollution Prevention and Mitigation;

Subject Of Investigation
0210 - Water resources;

Field Of Science
2050 - Hydrology;

Keywords

agrochemical impacts

environmental health

pesticide transport

pesticide mitigation

vfsmod

Goals / Objectives
Characterize abiotic and biotic processes that influence the sources, fate, transport and transformations of agrochemicals in agricultural and natural ecosystems. Quantify and mitigate human and environmental impacts of agrochemicals.

Project Methods
Objective 2:Characterize abiotic and biotic processes that influence the sources, fate, transport and transformations of agrochemicals in agricultural and natural ecosystems.Methods for the study of agrochemical sources, transport and transformation (mechanisms and rates) will be developed. Mechanisms responsible for agrochemical transport and fate will be the same as those for contaminants from wastewater treatment systems as well as general use (e.g. petroleum-based) products, thus work in these areas is directly translatable to agrochemical mechanisms. A focus for FL PI will be in understanding the interaction of runoff pestides, distributed in the liquid (runoff water)and solid (sediment) phases, with dense vegetation and soil and hydrological components.Objective 4: Quantify and mitigate human and environmental impacts of agrochemicals.Projectin FL will focus on the development and application of the computer model VFSMOD (developed by the FL PI) for mitigation of runoff pesticides from agrucultrual, rual and transportation landuses. The work will include the development and testing of a new pestice fate component (degradation, remobilization and carry over) for VFSMOD using laboratory, database nalysis and numerical methods.

Progress 10/01/20 to 09/30/21

Outputs
Target Audience:Researchers, agrochemica industry, consultants, environmental management agencies (EPA, USDA), NGOs. Changes/Problems:The spike in COVID-19 cases and closure of activities hindered plans to attend the annual project meeting. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Limited interaction and professional developmentdue to COVID 19 this year. Exnchanges were limited to email and ZOOM. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?In addition to journal publications, several invited international conferences were presented on the topic of quantitative mitigation of runoff pesticides in agricultrual settings with vegetative filters. strips using our model VFSMOD. These included: Muñoz-Carpena, 2020."Advances in VFS Modeling to Mitigate Pesticides". Invited plenary presentation,2020 CERSA Workshop "Incorporating the Benefits of Vegetative Filter Strips into Risk Assessment and Risk Management of Pesticides, Center of Excellence for Regulatory Science in Agriculture (CERSA), North Carolina State University, Raleigh, August 31-Sept. 2, 2020 Muñoz-Carpena, 2020.VFS Effectiveness to Mitigate Pesticides: Mechanistic Analysis with VFSMOD: Identifying important drivers in quantitative pesticide mitigation exposure assessments. Invitedpresentation.US-EPA workshop "Developing Higher-Tier Exposure Assessment Framework and Risk Mitigation Measures for Wetland Endangered Species Assessment of Herbicides", Purdue University, October 26,2020 Muñoz-Carpena, 2020.Quantitative MitigationPesticides wih Vegetative Filter Strips: Mechanistic Analysis with VFSMOD. Invitedpresentation.22nd International Akademie Fresenius AGRO Conference on "Behaviour of Pesticides in Air, Soil and Water", Mainz, Germany. June 16-17, 2020 Muñoz-Carpena, 2020. Vegetative Filter Strips for Mitiagtion ofRunoff Agrochemical Pollution.Keynote presentation. Docotral Program in Environmental Sciences and Aquatic Continental Systems. University of Concepción, Chile,June 21,2021 What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?In the next reporting period, we plan to develop and experimentally test a new algorithm for pesticide remobilization from vegetative filter strips, study the influence of shallow water table on long term exposure assessments for the EU and North American conditions, and develop and test a new algorithm for robust estimation of sedimetn particle size in runoff affecting pesticide surface water pollution. I also plan to attend the next Hatch Project meeting to present the results and discuss integration with work presented by other group members.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? We investigated important hydrology and pollution processes that influence the sources, fate, transport and transformations of agrochemicals in agricultural and natural ecosystems includingpreferential flow in riparian areas (Orozco-Lopez and R. Muñoz-Carpena, 2021; Guertault et al., 2021; Orozco-Lopez et al., 2021), quantification of the efficiency of vegetative filter strips to mitigate runoff pesticide in regulatory exposure assessments, and risk quantification of mercury exposure in artisanal comunities (Morgan et al, 2020).

Publications

• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Morgan V., L. Casso-Hartmann, I. Velez-Torres, D.C. Vanegas, R. Mu�oz-Carpena, E.S. McLamore and G. Kiker. 2020. Modeling exposure risk and prevention of mercury in drinking water for artisanal-small scale gold mining communities. Human and Ecological Risk Assessment
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Fox, G.A., R. Mu�oz-Carpena, B. Brooks, T. Hall. 2021. Advancing surface water pesticide exposure assessments for ecosystem protection. Trans. ASABE 64(2): 377-387doi:10.13031/trans.14225
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Orozco-Lopez, E. and R. Mu�oz-Carpena, R. 2021. Comparative non-Darcian modelling of subsurface preferential flow experimental observations in a riparian buffer. Trans. ASABE 64(5). doi:10.13031/trans.14559.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Guertault, L. G.A.Fox, D. Heeren, T. Hallihan and R Mu�oz-Carpena. 2021. Quantifying the importance of preferential flow in a riparian buffer. Trans. ASABE 64(3):937-947. doi:10.13031/trans.14286.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Orozco-L�pez, E., R. Mu�oz-Carpena, B. Gao and G.A. Fox. 2021. High resolution pore-scale water content measurement in a translucent soil profile from light transmission. Trans. ASABE64(3):949-962.doi:10.13031/trans.14292.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Mu�oz-Carpena, R., S. Reichenberger, R. Sur, K. Hammel. 2021. Fate of pesticide residues in vegetative filter strips in long-term exposure assessments: VFSMOD development and analysis (invited presentation). 2021 SETAC Europe 33th Annual Conference, May 3-6, 2021.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Reichenberger, S., R. Sur, S. Sittig, S. Multsch, R. Mu�oz-Carpena. Recommendations for the parameterization of sediment trapping in VFSMOD. 2021 SETAC Europe 33th Annual Conference, May 3-6, 2021.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Sur R., R. Mu�oz-Carpena , S. Reichenberger , K. Hammel , H. Meyer , N. Kehrein. 2021. Implementation of shallow water table effects in pesticide runoff mitigation by VFS within SWAN-VFSMOD. 2021 SETAC Europe 33th Annual Conference, May 3-6, 2021.