Journal
ENVIRONMENTAL TOXICOLOGY AND CHEMISTRY
Volume 27, Issue 4, Pages 811-818Publisher
WILEY-BLACKWELL
DOI: 10.1897/07-216.1
Keywords
golf course; pesticide; Japanese medaka; semipermeable membrane device
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Golf courses impact the environment through alterations to habitat and through the release of nutrients and pesticides. The Precambrian Shield region of central Ontario, Canada, which is a major recreational area, is especially susceptible to the impacts of golf courses as a result of the geology and hydrology of the region. In a monitoring program at two golf courses in the Muskoka region conducted during the spring, summer, and fall of 2002, semipermeable membrane devices (SPMDs) were deployed into streams that drain the golf courses. The extracts from the SPMDs were tested for toxicity using bioassays with early life stages of an aquarium fish, the Japanese medaka (Oryzias latipes). Toxicity was assessed using a scoring system developed for the present study. The bioassays with medaka indicated that toxicity was highest in extracts from SPMDs deployed during the spring and the fall. The peaks in toxicity for the SPMDs deployed at the two golf courses corresponded with the presence in the SPMD extracts of pentachloronitrobenzene (PCNB) at concentrations up to 334 ng/SPMD. Quintozene is the turfgrass fungicide in which PCNB is the active ingredient. Pentachlorothioanisole, an anaerobic degradation product of PCNB, also was detected in the SPMDs deployed during the spring. Extracts prepared from SPMDs with high toxicity contained residues of a surfactant used in pesticide formulations, nonylphenol, at concentrations up to approximately 20 mu g/SPMD. Overall, these data indicate that some pesticides applied to golf courses in the Precambrian Shield of central Ontario may have the potential to cause toxic impacts to aquatic organisms in adjacent watersheds.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available