Léo Ramos Chaves / Revista Pesquisa FAPESPSugarcane, the main crop grown in the Brotas region of São Paulo StateLéo Ramos Chaves / Revista Pesquisa FAPESP
Rainwater can be a source of pesticide contamination and should not be ingested, especially in agricultural regions, concluded a group from the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) that collected and examined samples from three cities in São Paulo: Campinas, Brotas, and the state capital. The highest concentration of pesticides (herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides) was found in Campinas, with 701 micrograms per square meter (µg/m2), followed by Brotas with 680 µg/m2, and São Paulo with 223 µg/m2. The study identified a direct association between the proportion of chemical compounds and the amount of land covered by agricultural crops, which occupy almost half of Campinas’s 795 square kilometers (km2), 30% of Brotas’s 1,101 km2, and 7% of the capital’s 1,521 km2. Water samples were collected from a test farm in Brotas and residential backyards in the other two cities between August 2019 and September 2021, using a 1-meter-long PVC tube, a glass funnel, and a 1-liter amber glass bottle. Among the 14 pesticides identified, the herbicide atrazine was detected in every sample from all three cities, despite being banned. Two of the herbicides and one fungicide pose a risk to aquatic life, since rainwater supplies rivers (Chemosphere, March).
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