Abteilung Umweltchemie

Objective. Estimates of pesticide exposure among applicators from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are scarce, and exposure assessment methods are sometimes costly or logistically unfeasible. We examined the variability in weeklong pesticide exposure among applicators in Costa Rica and its predictors.
Methods. We conducted a cross-sectional survey among 221 pesticide applicators from organic, sustainable and conventional farms in 2016. We administered structured questionnaires to assess pesticide application practices at two time points (4–6 weeks apart). We adapted an existing algorithm to fit the context of smallholders and derive weekly pesticide exposure scores. We used linear mixed-effect models to examine within-worker and between-worker score variability. We then identified sociodemographic and occupational predictors of weekly pesticide exposure scores.
Results. We observed high within-worker and between-worker variability in weekly pesticide exposures (eg, up to 180-fold and 70-fold differences in average weekly exposures within and between workers, respectively; intraclass correlation coefficient=0.4). Applicators working on conventional and sustainable farms had exposure scores twofold and 1.5-fold higher than those working in organic farms, respectively. Farm workers who received training on pesticide use had weekly pesticide exposure scores of 33% (95% CI 1% to 55%) lower than those who did not receive any training.
Conclusions. In this study of applicators from smallholder farms in Costa Rica, we determined the importance of collecting questionnaire data on self-reported pesticide use repeatedly due to its high variability within workers and absence of application records. Our questionnaire-based exposure algorithm could allow the calculation of semiquantitative estimates of average pesticide exposure for applicators from other LMICs.

The clock is ticking and just a little more than 10 years remain to meet the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Enhanced political and public awareness, inter- and transdisciplinary engagement, new partnerships, and multisectoral collaborations are required to foster knowledge-and-action societies in order to tackle the complex issues that are inherent to sustainable development. A one-day symposium held in Basel, Switzerland, in November 2018 offered a venue for open exchange on how to stimulate dialogue for co-creating innovative ideas and scalable action to address some of the most pressing challenges of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Biotransformation of chemical pollutants is an ecological process requiring multifunctionality (multiple metabolic pathways) and, potentially, high biodiversity. Phytoplankton communities are highly diverse functionally and taxonomically and co-occur with complex mixtures of organic pollutants in aquatic environments. Here, we investigated how phytoplankton species richness (SR) and class richness (CR) determine the biotransformation of a mixture of 37 structurally diverse pollutants using laboratory experiments and analysis of high-resolution mass spectrometry data. Laboratory phytoplankton communities were assembled from pure cultures by creating a gradient from one to five taxonomic groups, and 5 to 11 total species, in defined medium. The biotransformation of pollutants over 6 days and the total number of transformed chemicals increased with CR for 13 considerably transformed compounds. The total number of transformation products (TPs, up to 42) was positively affected by both CR and SR: CR had a positive effect on stable TPs found, and SR led to more transient TPs. Our data indicate that both taxonomic and functional diversity are important for biotransformation of anthropogenic chemicals in phytoplankton and suggest that plankton biodiversity could play a role in the remediation of pollutant loads in aquatic ecosystems.

Soil erosion and associated sediment transfer are among the major causes of aquatic ecosystem and surface water quality impairment. Through land use and agricultural practices, human activities modify the soil erosive risk and the catchment connectivity, becoming a key factor of sediment dynamics. Hence, restoration and management plans of water bodies can only be efficient if the sediment sources and the proportion attributable to different land uses are identified. According to this aim, we applied two approaches, namely compound-specific isotope analysis (CSIA) of long-chain fatty acids (FAs) and triterpenoid biomarker analysis, to a eutrophic lake, Lake Baldegg, and its agriculturally used catchment (Switzerland). Soils reflecting the five main land uses of the catchment (arable lands, temporary and permanent grasslands, mixed forests, orchards) were subjected to CSIA. The compound-specific stable isotope δ¹³C signatures clearly discriminate between potential grasslands (permanent and temporary) and forest sources. Signatures of agricultural land and orchards fall in between. The soil signal was compared to the isotopic signature of a lake sediment sequence covering ca. 130 years (before 1885 to 2009). The recent lake samples (1940 to 2009, with the exception of 1964 to 1972) fall into the soil isotopic signature polygon and indicate an important contribution of the forests, which might be explained by (1) the location of the forests on steep slopes, resulting in a higher connectivity of the forests to the lake, and/or (2) potential direct inputs of trees and shrubs growing along the rivers feeding the lake and around the lake. However, the lake sediment samples older than 1940 lie outside the source soils' polygon, as a result of FA contribution from a not yet identified source, most likely produced by an in situ aquatic source, either algae, bacteria or other microorganisms or an ex-site historic source from wetland soils and plants (e.g. Sphagnum species). Despite the overprint of the yet unknown source on the historic isotopic signal of the lake sediments, land use and catchment history are clearly reflected in the CSIA results, with isotopic shifts being synchronous with changes in the catchment, land use and eutrophication history. The investigated highly specific biomarkers were not detected in the lake sediment, even though they were present in the soils. However, two trimethyltetrahydrochrysenes (TTHCs), natural diagenetic products of pentacyclic triterpenoids, were found in the lake sediments. Their origin is attributed to the in situ microbial degradation of some of the triterpenoids. While the need to apportion sediment sources is especially crucial in eutrophic systems, our study stresses the importance of exercising caution with CSIA and triterpenoid biomarkers in such environments, where the active metabolism of bacteria might mask the original terrestrial isotopic signals.