OCCURRENCE, BEHAVIOR AND ECOTOXICITY OF ORGANOPHOSPHORUS PESTICIDES (OPPS) IN MARINE ENVIRONMENTS: A REVIEW

PALACIOS, PILAR; GIRONES, LAUTARO; VITALE, CRISTIAN; ANDRÉS H. ARIAS

Marine Environments: Diversity, Threats and Conservation

Nova Science

Lugar: New York; Año: 2020; p. 200 - 250

Since the banning of popular organochlorine pesticides in 1970s,organophosphorus pesticides (OPPs) started to be widely used throughout the worldfor agricultural purposes. With an increasing popularity since the 1980s, they weresimultaneously applied with organochlorine pesticides for several years. OPPs representthe most commonly used pesticides around the world, in order to protect agriculturalcrops against pests, private houses, gardens and in veterinary practices.Chemically, although they have a lower half-life in the environmentthan organochlorine pesticides, a moderate persistence and ecotoxicological effectson non-target species like invertebrates, fish, birds, and even humans have beendemonstrated. OPPs resistance to degradation leads to a half-life ranging from hours-athigh temperature, extreme pH or high radiation to more than 6 months in the marineenvironment.They commonly enter to the marine environments transported byriver runoff from the continent in dissolved phase or sorbed to particulate matter.Once in the water, they can enter the trophic network causing damage to the biota;in simultaneous, they can undergo chemical, photochemical and biological degradativeprocesses which could result in more toxic metabolites than the parental compounds.This review-chapter will describe the development history of theorganophosphorus pesticides class, their environmental fate, behavior, and currentsconcentrations in marine environments and the state of the art of their possibleeffects to the marine biota.