RISK ASSESSMENT OF PESTICIDE CONTAMINATION POTENTIALS IN EMBILlPITlYA AREA
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31357/fesympo.v0i0.1533Abstract
Embilipitiya is a highly agricultural area, which has consumed a remarkable amount ofagrochemicals in last two decades. Hence pesticide movement level studies are necessaryto prevent the contamination of soil and water by these pesticides.
Pesticides Impact Ranking Index (pIRI) is a simple computation model, which can beused for ranking pesticides according to their leaching ability and toxicity levels. Itrequires soil and climatic parameters. chemical and application information of pesticides,etc. The risk levels are indicated as very low, low, medium, high, very high andextremely high according to their leaching and toxicity conditions
The modeling using PIRI was carried out to rank the most widely used three pesticides,3,4 DPA, Carbfuran and MCPA, for 14 different soil series present in Embilipitiya area.The risk level frequencies were calculated for each pesticide. For 8 soil series high riskleaching potential was obtained. Carbofuran and Walawa series has extremely highleaching potential than others. In comparison, MCPA has a medium risk potential for 10soil series. 3,4 DPA has a very low leaching potential for all soils.
Toxicity levels obtained for most of the soil series are low except for Thimbolketiya andWalawa soil series. They have high and medium toxicity levels respectively forcarbofuran. Hence the risk level of carbofuran is very high, MCPA is medium and 3,4DPA is low in different soils present in Embilipitiya area and therefore the usage ofCarbofuran needs to be controlled. In pesticide usage and selection, extra care andawareness procedures are necessary to prevent ground water contamination in future.
