Analysis of current-use pesticides in aquatic and terrestrial organisms collected throughout California, USA

A wide variety of pesticides are applied concurrently in agricultural and urban areas and transported off site dissolved in water and bound to sediments. But the exposure of aquatic and terrestrial organisms to current-use pesticides and the resulting effects are not well understood. One approach is to directly analyze tissue concentrations of contaminants. The overall objective of this study was to develop a sensitive method to analyze current-use pesticides with a wide range of Kow's in tissue to better understand the accumulation of these contaminants in different aquatic and terrestrial organisms. This method was then used to analyze current-use pesticides in tissues from a variety of organisms from sites with different land-use practices.