Occurrence, Behavior and Ecotoxicity of Organophosphorus Pesticides (OPPs) in Marine Environments: A Review

PILAR PALACIOS; LAUTARO GIRONES; CRISTIAN ALEJANDRO VITALE; ANDRÉS HUGO ARIAS

Marine Environments: Diversity, Threats and Conservation

Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Lugar: New York; Año: 2020;

Since the banning of popular organochlorine pesticides in 1970s, organophosphoruspesticides (OPPs) started to be widely used throughout the world for agricultural purposes.With an increasing popularity since the 1980s, they were simultaneously applied withorganochlorine pesticides for several years. OPPs represent the most commonly usedpesticides around the world, in order to protect agricultural crops against pests, privatehouses, gardens and in veterinary practices.Chemically, although they have a lower half-life in the environment than organochlorinepesticides, a moderate persistence and ecotoxicological effects on non-target species likeinvertebrates, fish, birds, and even humans have been demonstrated. OPPs resistance todegradation leads to a half-life ranging from hours-at high temperature, extreme pH or highradiation to more than 6 months in the marine environment.They commonly enter to the marine environments transported by river runoff from thecontinent in dissolved phase or sorbed to particulate matter. Once in the water, they canenter the trophic network causing damage to the biota; in simultaneous, they can undergochemical, photochemical and biological degradative processes which could result in moretoxic metabolites than the parental compounds.This review-chapter will describe the development history of the organophosphoruspesticides class, their environmental fate, behavior, and currents concentrations in marineenvironments and the state of the art of their possible effects to the marine biota.