Authors: Asil Nurzhanova Sergey Kalugin Kabl Zhambakin
Publish Date: 2012/08/14
Volume: 20, Issue: 4, Pages: 2054-2063
Abstract
In Kazakhstan there is a problem of finding ways to clean local sites contaminated with pesticides In particular such sites are the deserted and destroyed storehouses where these pesticides were stored existing storehouses do not fulfill sanitary standards Phytoremediation is one potential method for reducing risk from these pesticides Genetic heterogeneity of populations of wild and weedy species growing on pesticidecontaminated soil provides a source of plant species tolerant to these conditions These plant species may be useful for phytoremediation applications In 2008–2009 and 2011 we surveyed substances stored in 80 former pesticide storehouses in Kazakhstan Almaty oblast to demonstrate an inventory process needed to understand the obsolete pesticide problem throughout the country and observed a total of 3547 t of obsolete pesticides At the sites we have found organochlorine pesticides residues in soil including metabolites of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane and isomers of hexachlorocyclohexane Twentyfour of the storehouse sites showed pesticides concentrations in soil higher than maximum allowable concentration which is equal to 100 μg kg−1 in Kazakhstan Seventeen pesticidetolerant wild plant species were selected from colonizing plants that grew into/near the former storehouse’s pesticides The results have shown that colonizing plant annual and biannual species growing on soils polluted by pesticides possess ability to accumulate organochlorine pesticide residues and reduce pesticide concentrations in soil Organochlorine pesticides taken up by the plants are distributed unevenly in different plant tissues The main organ of organochlorine pesticide accumulation is the root system The accumulation rate of organochlorine pesticides was found to be a specific characteristic of plant species and dependent on the degree of soil contamination This information can be used for technology development of phytoremediation of pesticidecontaminated soilsThis work was funded by the United States Environmental Protection Agency US EPA in the framework of the International Science and Technology Center ISTC Moscow project K750 and the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan
Keywords: