A General Overview of Pesticides in Soil: Requirement of Sensitive and Current Residue Analysis Methods

Abstract

Pesticides are chemical agents used to destroy or control pests, both in agriculture and in public health. Despite the beneficial effects associated with the usage of them, these chemicals may cause adverse effects to humans and to the nature. In addition, many pesticides are persistent and may therefore bioaccumulate in the environment; also some of them are important carcinogens and mutagens. In the world, alarming levels of pesticides have been detected in air, water, soil, as well as in foods and biological materials. Because of the special character as sink and source of contaminants soil is a critical medium, and as an environmental contaminant that comes into contact with soil intensively, pesticides are one of the important issues of environmental soil forensics. The different classes and wide range of pesticides and environmental mediums containing them have made essential the development of sensitive and current methods for the analysis of pesticide residues for environmental monitoring and forensic investigations. This chapter describes pesticides, historical background of pesticide usage, pesticides classification, environmental impacts and fate of pesticides, misuse and overuse of them, and provides a general brief overview on the soil sampling and pre-treatment, the basic principles of the conventional and also modern extraction approaches (including their advantages and disadvantages), and the chromatographic-based determination techniques used for pesticide residue analysis in soil.