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PESTICIDE CONTAMINATION OF SOILS AND CROPS IN CHELIABINSK OBLAST

Basarygina E.M., Candidate of Sciences (Engineering), Assistant Professor of Cheliabinsk State Agro-Engineering University

As it is well known, it is impossible now to find a place on the Earth surface (even in natural reserves), which is absolutely free from residues of one pesticide or another. While background pesticide levels might be as low as a few micrograms per 1kg of soil, pesticides (especially organochlorine ones) have potent biological activity and their levels may grow in the course of their migration in food chains.

Cheliabinsk Oblast is not an exception from the general rule. According to analysis of data of pesticide application from mid-1960s to this time, normalised pesticide loads reached: 0.6kg/hectare in 1965 - 1979, 1.0kg/hectare in 1979 - 1989, 0.4kg/hectare in 1990 - 1994, 0.37kg/hectare in 1995, 0.34kg/hectare in 1996, and 0.31kg/hectare in 1997.

Average seasonal application of pesticides (from 1995) reached about 1000 tons of pesticides of 30 - 60 different brands; pesticides were used at about 20% of cultivated land. The major share of these pesticides were represented by organic ones (among them, herbicides were the most widely used, these chemicals were followed by insecticides, while the share of fungicides was minimal). These pesticides included 2,4-D (amine salt), fuzilad , hexachlorane, Bordeaux mixture, prometryne, zencor, etc.

Pesticides are applied by aerial and ground spraying. Besides that, pesticides are used for seed treatment. Average biologic activity of pesticides vary from 70 to 90%.

Russian publications provide results of observations of toxic impacts of xenoboitics on rural area residents, who had continuous contacts with pesticides. Comparatively to urban dwellers, residents of rural areas were found to have twice higher morbidity rates and to live shorter (the life expectancy gap reaches 7 - 10 years). Even in some comparatively environmentally healthy zones, where pesticides are applied in strict compliance with the due standards and agriculture practices, children of their early years of life receive with food 4 times higher daily intake doses of organochlorine pesticides, than the ones, suggested by WHO (0.6mg/day for an individual, weighting 60kg). In those countries, which ensure compliance with standards of pesticide application, cumulative annual doses of pesticides reach 50mg, i.e. the intake is smaller than a quarter of a standard aspirin pill. Japan may be suggested as an example - the country enjoys the highest life expectancy in the World and has the highest pesticide application figures - 10.6kg/hectare.

In Cheliabinsk Oblast, pesticide management operations are made with violations of the due standards of occupational safety:

• pesticide handling operations without respirators/gas masks;

• use of filter cartridges with expired working life in respirators or use of cartridges designed for other applications;

• absence of warning signs;

• works with insecticides at strong wind and high temperatures conditions;

• over-application;

• seed-treatment operations at sites, located within sanitary zones of residential areas;

• aerial spraying of land plots at close distances from residential areas (180m).

Just one example of violation of pesticide management practices: in the course of aerial spraying of a wheat field by 2,4-DA (luvaram), the pesticide cloud was blown away and landed at a nearby pea field, as a result, 5 children (from 6 to 14 years) were poisoned (minor or medium poisoning). The case was registered in 1997 in "Rymnikskoye" JS agriculture facility.

Results of pesticide quality testing revealed that 33% of pesticide samples (or 33 tons of chemicals)did not comply with the State Standard and specifications.

Many agriculture facilities started to apply vincite for seed treatment purposes. These facilities were warned that vincite is not incorporated into the List of Pesticides Allowed for Application in the Russian Federation.

Annual monitoring of pesticide levels in soils of the Oblast revealed that their residual levels are lower than relevant MALs. On the average, a pesticide analysis cover 5040 soil samples and 2200 samples of agriculture products. Analysis of agriculture products (sausages, milk, butter, bread, oat and pea) revealed pesticide levels in excess of MALs (fuzilad, luvaram, hexachlorane).

Generally, reduction of pesticide application in the Oblast, observed in recent years, has resulted in severe expansion of weeds at cultivated fields. In 1998, weeds occupied 1.3 million hectares from the overall stock of 2.7 million hectares.

Biological means of plant protection are used only in greenhouses.

Since 1990, the Oblast has been experiencing serious environmental problems, associated with elimination of banned and obsolete pesticides.

In 1994 - 1996, 6 cases of illegal dumping of pesticides (about 24 tons) were registered along the highway between Cheliabinsk and Ufa, nearby surface water bodies of Zlatoust and Satkin district. The pesticide emergency induced urgent response actions with involvement of the Civil Defence Forces - pesticides were collected and disposed at municipal landfills for solid waste. Such a practice is absolutely prohibited by all due sanitary-hygiene and environmental regulations. These pesticides belong to the group of highly toxic chemicals, and their toxic effects are compatible with those of chemical weapons.

As at January 1, 1999, there were 79562 tons of banned pesticides and 12360 tons of obsolete plant protection chemicals at the territory of the Oblast. The pesticides are stored mainly due to non-existent capacity for their elimination or burial. The last pesticide-elimination operation happened in 1992 (16 tons of pesticides were transported to Ufa for elimination at a plasmochemical installation). By 1995, the facility had been liquidated. In 1995, the Centre for Environment and Natural Resources of the Oblast, jointly with Snezhinsk affiliate of the National R&D Institute of Thermophysics developed a project for production of pesticide elimination/disposal equipment. In 1996, the project had been approved, but construction works at the site for burial of banned and obsolete pesticides were not funded.

From the overall stock of 66 standard storage facilities for agro-chemicals in the Oblast (as at 1997), 27 facilities badly need repairs. Besides that, there are 107 ad hoc storage sites, and the figure continues to grow, because agriculture facilities do not have sufficient finance resources to construct specially equipped storage sites. They do not have money even for repair of already operational storage sites, in many cases these facilities have broken doorways and leaking roofs, people and animals may contact pesticides without obstacles.

The situation is further aggravated by generally bad land quality in Cheliabinsk Oblast. According to space surveys, the overall area of contaminated territories reaches 29.5 thousand km2 or 56% of Cheliabinsk Oblast. Cheliabinsk Oblast is one of leading regions of Russia with respect to generation of toxic waste, wastewater discharges and emissions from fixed sources.

Ural zone is identified as one of the most heavily contaminated by dioxins and dioxin-like compounds territories of Russia (Federal Focused Programs "Protection of Population and Environment from Dioxins and Dioxin-like Toxicants for 1996 - 1997"). In 1997, the Section for Environment and Emergency Response of the City Administration (jointly with Bashkir Institute of Applied Ecology and Natural Resource Use) analysed the city area contamination by dioxins and furans. Snow samples were analysed with application of chromatographs with mass-spectrometry detection. The highest concentration of dioxins and furans were registered nearby the city landfill. Besides that, it was rather alarming to identify presence of super-toxicants in the sample from territory of the medical unit of Cheliabinsk Metallurgic Plant.

Authorities try to address the problem of persistent organic pollutants. In 1998, the Mayor of Cheliabinsk issued a Directive to ensure legal regulation of issues, associated with decommissioning of installations and equipment, containing dioxin-like substances, work were initiated to make inventory of all operational and decommissioned installations and equipment. Appropriate foreign experience of safe storage and destruction of PCBs is being studied. In 1997, inspections were carried out to check pesticide storage conditions. Directive letters "On Strengthening of State Control over Pesticide Storage and Application" were sent to all districts of the Oblast. 653 trainings on occupational safety of pesticide-handling operations were conducted (the trainings were attended by 3629 persons). The Oblast Governor has approved Regulation "On Procedures for Registration, Transportation, Application and Utilisation of Pesticides and Agro-Chemicals, Delivered to Cheliabinsk Oblast". The major companies, engaged in trade in agro-chemicals, were registered (the companies delivered 103 batches of pesticides of 25 different brands). At the territory of the Oblast, 10 District Plant Protection Stations and 10 Warning and Prognosis Points operate. (Among many other causes of the contemporary situation, shortage of professional agronomists in agriculture facilities was also specified. There are some agriculture facilities, which do not have agronomists at all).

Cheliabinsk State Agro-Engineering University pays major attention to issues of plant protection. Research woks are under way, inter alia in the sphere of application of election-ion technology for agriculture purposes. The technology develops now into a separate area of electric technologies (the technology development started as early as it 1950s, based on works of our university). The research works incorporate:

• development of electric weeders (using inhibiting effects of electric fields);

• research for enhancement of efficiency of seed treatment and application of herbicides (e.g. in the case of Russian knapweed - a quarantine weed);

• intensification of seed incrustation processes (coating) for seeds, which should be preferentially treated by pesticides;

• research of improvement (restoration) of capacity of ion-exchange resins, which may adsorb pesticides and (hypothetically) dioxins and furans.

It is necessary to note active participation of 2 non-governmental organisations of the Oblast ("Ecology" - Cheliabinsk Oblast non-government fund, headed by N.A.Schur, and "A Step Forward" - Snezhinsk city human rights group, headed by T.M.Schur) in practical implementation of several joint actions with Cheliabinsk State Agro-Engineering University. These actions included development of a test indoor site for plant cultivation with use of ion-exchange resins in Municipal secondary school No. 128 of Cheliabinsk. These organisations - and first of all their leaders - provided finance and moral support. Without active involvement of these people and their high commitment, the project implementation would have been impossible. At the test site schoolchildren themselves produce environmentally clean vegetables, with high contents of vitamins and eco-protectors. Moreover, they learn to carry out simple research works, including bio-indication, bio-testing and allelopathy (i.e. how plants influence other plants by release of metabolites into environmental media). Research works of the schoolchildren, made under guidance of the school director (who is a post-graduate and a research fellow of Cheliabinsk State Agro-Engineering University) at the test site, were awarded by 2nd and 3rd grade diploma at the district research and practice conference.

The test site works were also positively assessed by Dutch visitors - Mary Kranendonk-Shwarts and Olga Oganjianian - who visited School No. 128 in April this year.

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