Glyphosate Residues in Groundwater, Drinking Water and Urine of Subsistence Farmers from Intensive Agriculture Localities: A Survey in Hopelchén, Campeche, Mexico

Abstract

The use of pesticides in Mexican agriculture creates an interest in learning about the presence of these substances in different environmental matrices. Glyphosate (GLY) is an herbicide widely used in the state of Campeche, located in the Mayan zone in the western Yucatan peninsula. Despite the fact that GLY is considered a non-toxic pesticide to humans, its presence in water bodies through spillage, runoff, and leaching are a risk to human health or biota that inhabit these ecosystems. In the present study, glyphosate residues were determined in groundwater, bottled drinking water, and the urine of subsistence farmers from various localities of the Hopelchén municipality in Campeche. Determination of GLY was carried out using Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA). The highest concentrations of GLY were observed in the groundwater (1.42 μg/L) of Ich-Ek and urine (0.47 μg/L) samples of subsistence farmers from the Francisco J. Mújica communities. The glyphosate concentrations in groundwater and bottled drinking water indicate an exposure and excessive use of glyphosate in these agricultural communities. This is one of the first studies that reports glyphosate concentration levels in human urine and bottled drinking water in México and in the groundwater in the Yucatan Peninsula as part of a prospective pilot study, to which a follow-up will be performed to monitor this trend over time.

Submarine Groundwater Discharge and Stream Baseflow Sustain Pesticide and Nutrient Fluxes in Faga'alu Bay, American Samoa

“…Chemical and physical properties such as solubility, adsorption, degradation, and volatilization determine the potential of pesticides to contaminate groundwater (Chin and Weber, 1988;Davidson, 1995). Many studies have described pesticide movement in groundwater (e.g., Zhang et al, 2009;Rendón-von Osten and Dzul-Caamal, 2017), including the presence of the ubiquitous herbicide glyphosate (Magga et al, 2008) but few have documented their transport across the landocean interface to the coastal ocean through SGD (Gallagher et al, 1996;Almasri, 2008).…”

Re-registration Challenges of Glyphosate in the European Union

“…Removal or degradation of glyphosate residues from raw drinking water by bank filtration may not be efficient, but oxidants used in water treatment (e.g., Cl 2 or O 3 ) were shown to be effective in degrading their concentration below the EU drinking water threshold level of 0.1 µg/l (Jönsson et al, 2013). Nonetheless, glyphosate residues were reported in bottled drinking water (Rendón-von Osten and Dzul-Caamal, 2017). Glyphosate residues were detected in honey and soy sauce (Rubio et al, 2014), in produce (Bøhn et al, 2014), processed food products, even in human specimens (blood, urine, mother's milk) (Knudsen et al, 2017;Rendón-von Osten and Dzul-Caamal, 2017).…”

“…Nonetheless, glyphosate residues were reported in bottled drinking water (Rendón-von Osten and Dzul-Caamal, 2017). Glyphosate residues were detected in honey and soy sauce (Rubio et al, 2014), in produce (Bøhn et al, 2014), processed food products, even in human specimens (blood, urine, mother's milk) (Knudsen et al, 2017;Rendón-von Osten and Dzul-Caamal, 2017). It should be noted, however, that measurements of glyphosate in complex biological matrices e.g., blood and breast milk, that led to positive scores used ELISA methods of questionable accuracy, and instrumental analysis by LC-MS/MS did not find glyphosate above its limit of detection in human breast milk (McGuire et al, 2016;Steinborn et al, 2016).…”

Spectrophotometric Detection of Glyphosate in Water by Complex Formation between Bis 5-Phenyldipyrrinate of Nickel (II) and Glyphosate

“…Its use is allowed in agricultural, urban, and domestic activities [4], with the agricultural application being the most intensive one. The physical and chemical properties of glyp allow its distribution in the environmental compartments [5][6][7]. Furthermore, its chelating ability and the absorption constant in soil allows for its accumulation in several types of soils, mainly clays [8]; it is considered a stable compound in a pH range between 4 and 9 for hydrolysis and photolysis [9,10].…”

“…In addition, its metabolite, aminomethylphosphonic acid (AMPA), also represents a potential danger to human and animal health [14,15]. Both compounds have been detected in groundwater and surface water in several countries [6,16,17]. As glyp has been labeled as a global pollutant [18,19], assessing its presence in several environmental matrices is a vigorous area of research [20][21][22].…”