Pesticides residues in European agricultural soils - Results from LUCAS 2018 soil module
Results from LUCAS 2018 soil module
The EU Soil Observatory led a study targeting residues of active ingredients of pesticides used as crop protection products in soil samples collected from the 2018 LUCAS survey. This is the largest study providing a comprehensive characterisation on the extent of residues of active ingredients from pesticides in the soils of the EU. This work establishes an initial EU baseline, and project a future assessment of the effectiveness of EU policies and regulations targeting pesticides use and soil pollution. Moreover, this study provides the first steps on the development of risk indicators for soil, allowing to present the first temporal assessment of pesticides in EU soils following a pilot study with samples from 2015 LUCAS survey.
The main findings of this study allowed understanding that, pesticide use and residues in soils are widespread in the European agricultural lands (74.5%), whereas most of the sites (57.1%) present mixtures of substances. Additionally, an indicator of the ecotoxicological impact for soil organisms was developed, identifying areas at higher risk (1.7%), for which also was possible to estimate increase in ecotoxicological risk when compared with a previous assessment (2015-2018). Finally, the existing regulations on the sales of pesticides, could not prevent the presence of banned and non-approved substances in EU soils.
VIEIRA Diana;
FRANCO Antonio;
DE MEDICI Daniela;
MARTIN JIMENEZ Juan;
WOJDA Piotr;
JONES Arwyn;
2023-07-05
Publications Office of the European Union
JRC133940
978-92-68-05371-3 (online),
1831-9424 (online),
EUR 31586 EN,
OP KJ-NA-31-586-EN-N (online),
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC133940,
10.2760/86566 (online),
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