Preliminary Report of the Exposure to Glyphosate and Glufosinate of a MalePopulation in the Province of Córdoba (Argentina)

FILIPPI, IOHANNA; BONANSEA, ROCÍO INÉS; BUTINOF, MARIANA; FERNANDEZ, RICARDO; LLORCA, MARTA; FARRÉ, MARINELLA; MUÑOZ, SONIA EDITH; AMÉ, MARÍA VALERIA

Dublin

Congreso; SETAC Europe 33 Annual Meeting; 2023

SETAC

Argentina is one of the world leaders in the production and export of agricultural products. The volume of pesticides application increased during the last decades, being the herbicides, mainly glyphosate (GLY), the top sold products in the phytosanitary market. In recent years a notable increase in sells of herbicides no-GLY, as glufosinate (GLU), has been reported due to the weed resistance. In the province of Córdoba, the production of wheat, corn and soybeans requires the use of GLY and GLU. However, physicochemical characteristics of GLY, its main metabolite, aminomethylphosphonic acid (AMPA), and GLU make their detection particularly complex at low concentration levels, and the exposure of the local population remains unknown.The aim of this work was to develop a sensitive technique to detect and quantify GLY, AMPA and GLU in plasma and urine of a male population with different scenarios of exposure residing in the province of Córdoba.Urine and plasma samples were adequately pre-treated, derivatizated with FMOC-Cl and further extracted by solid phase extraction. Identification and quantification of the herbicides were carried out using High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) system coupled to a triple-quadrupole mass spectrometer equipped with a heated electrospray ionization source (TSQ-Quantiva). Then, urine and plasma samples from 31 subjects were analysed; 12 of them were people from the general population, and 19 were occupationally exposed to pesticides.The developed analytical procedures reached limits of quantification between 0.3 and 5.1 ng/mL with recoveries between 39 and 84 %. The most frequently detected analyte in plasma was GLY, followed by GLU (32 and 10 % in the total population, respectively). In urine, the most frequently detected herbicide was GLU, followed by GLY (13 and 6 % of the total population, respectively). The metabolite, AMPA, was the less frequently detected in both matrices. No differences between groups of subjects were found regarding the median concentration of the analytes.In conclusion, the analytical methodologies for the quantification of GLY, AMPA and GLU were adequate to analyze the biological samples. This study is the first report of concentration of GLU in plasma and urine in human population.