Cited by 157Pesticide and Herbicide Environmental StudiesPesticide Residue Analysis and SafetySoil and Water Nutrient Dynamics

A review of long-term pesticide monitoring studies to assess surface water quality trends

Open access
Chow, R., Scheidegger, R., Doppler, T., Dietzel, A., Fenicia, F., Stamm, C.·2020·Water Research X

Abstract

Aquatic pesticide pollution from both agricultural and urban pest control is a concern in many parts of the world. Making an accurate assessment of pesticide exposure is the starting point to protecting aquatic ecosystems. This in turn requires the design of an effective monitoring program. Monitoring is also essential to evaluate the efficacy of mitigation measures aimed to curb pesticide pollution. However, empirical evidence for their efficacy can be confounded by additional influencing factors, most prominently variable weather conditions. This review summarizes the experiences gained from long-term (>5 years) pesticide monitoring studies for detecting trends and provides recommendations for their improvement. We reviewed articles published in the scientific literature, with a few complements from selected grey literature, for a total of 20 studies which fulfill our search criteria. Overall, temporal trends of pesticide use and hydrological conditions were the two most common factors influencing aquatic pesticide pollution. Eighteen studies demonstrated observable effects to surface water concentrations from changes in pesticide application rates (e.g., use restriction) and sixteen studies from interannual variability in hydrological conditions during the application period. Accounting for seasonal- and streamflow-related variability in trend analysis is important because the two factors can obscure trends caused by changes in pesticide use or management practices. Other mitigation measures (e.g., buffer strips) were only detectable in four studies where concentrations or loads were reduced by > 45%. Collecting additional agricultural (e.g., pesticide use, mitigation measures) and environmental (e.g., precipitation, stream flow) data, as well as establishing a baseline before the implementation of mitigation measures have been consistently reported as prerequisites to interpret water quality trends from long-term monitoring studies, but have rarely been implemented in the past.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1016/j.wroa.2020.100064

Cites

83 of 83 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Pollution of water resources by various organic chemicals is a growing crisis worldwide.

    “Pollution of water resources by various organic chemicals has been identified as a growing crisis all over the world.”

    From Advanced Oxidation Processes for Degradation of Water Pollutants—Ambivalent Impact of Carbonate Species: A Review (2023) · cites this paper as [6]

    The Introduction (page not provided) identifies pesticide pollution as a threat to aquatic environments in many parts of the world. It does not establish that pollution by organic chemicals generally is growing or constitutes a worldwide crisis. (LLM, conf=0.87)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
  • Prosulfocarb was previously detected in surface waters several kilometres away from the application area during treatment weeks.

    “Prosulfocarb was previously detected in surface waters several kil­ ometres away from the application area during treatment weeks (Chow et al., 2020; Devault et al., 2022; Slaby et al., 2023).”

    From Occurrence of emerging and persistent organic pollutants in the rivers Cam, Ouse and Thames, UK (2025) · cites this paper as Chow et al., 2020

    The ‘Toxic tradeoffs’ section says prosulfocarb can contaminate areas surrounding its application through vapour drift and reports its detection in precipitation and atmospheric deposition. It does not report detection in surface waters several kilometres away or specify treatment weeks; the Introduction’s general discussion of pesticide concentrations in streams does not establish those details for prosulfocarb. The indexed passages provide no page numbers. (LLM, conf=0.84)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

3 of the 86 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 3

  1. Cheremisinoff N.P. Rosenfeld P. Handbook of Pollution Prevention and Cleaner Production vol. 3: Best Practices in the Agrochemical Industry vol. 3 2010 William Andrew
  2. van Leeuwen C.J. Vermeire T.G. Risk Assessment of Chemicals: an Introduction 2007 Springer Science & Business Media
  3. Water Protection Ordinance Water Protection Ordinance, OC vol. 814 1998 201

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Chow, R., Scheidegger, R., Doppler, T., Dietzel, A., Fenicia, F., & Stamm, C.
Affiliations
Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (CH)
Corresponding author
Chow, R.
Venue
Water Research X
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2020-12
Volume
9
Pages
100064
ISSN
2589-9147 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W3084398703
Cited by
156
References
86
Citations by year
2026: 13 · 2025: 31 · 2024: 35 · 2023: 32 · 2022: 27 · 2021: 17
FWCI
0.85
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Water Research X (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Socio-Environmental Systems Modeling (acceptedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • DORA Eawag (Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag)) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
Funders
Eidgenössische Anstalt für Wasserversorgung Abwasserreinigung und Gewässerschutz
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Pollution › Pesticide and Herbicide Environmental Studies
  • Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Food Science › Pesticide Residue Analysis and Safety
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Environmental Chemistry › Soil and Water Nutrient Dynamics
Keywords
pesticide contamination, surface water quality, long-term monitoring, temporal trends, agricultural pesticides, urban pest control, hydrological conditions, streamflow variability, mitigation measures, buffer strips, pesticide load, baseline data

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review