Leaching of plant protection products and their transformation products : proposals for improving the assessment of leaching to groundwater in the Netherlands : version 2

Summary

Assessment of leaching of plant protection products to groundwater is an important aspect of the environmental risk assessment of these substances. Analysis of available Dutch groundwater monitoring data for these substances triggered a critical review of the current Dutch leaching assessment. As a result, proposals were developed for improving this assessment. These include: (i) a procedure for correcting systematic errors in measured sorption coefficients, (ii) a preliminary procedure for a quality check of Freundlich exponents, (iii) a flow chart for obtaining parameters describing the relationship between the organic-matter/water distribution coefficient, Kom, and the pH for weak acids, (iv) a procedure for obtaining a Kom endpoint from a population of Kom values including lower and upper limits, (v) a procedure for estimating the total amount of substance in soil from a concentration profile (needed for assessment of degradation half-lives from field experiments). This report is an update of the proposals reported in 2011 by the same authors based on testing the feasibility of the proposals to a few dossiers