Residue Reviews: Residues of Pesticides and Other Contaminants in the Total Environment

That residues of pesticide and other contaminants in the total environ­ ment are of concern to everyone everywhere is attested by the reception accorded previous volumes of "Residue Reviews" and by the gratifying enthusiasm, sincerity, and efforts shown by all the individuals from whom manuscripts have been solicited. Despite much propaganda to the con­ trary, there can never be any serious question that pest-control chemicals and food-additive chemicals are essential to adequate food production, manufacture, marketing, and storage, yet without continuing surveillance and intelligent control some of those that persist in our foodstuffs could at times conceivably endanger the public health. Ensuring safety-in-use of these many chemicals is a dynamic challenge, for established ones are continually being displaced by newly developed ones more acceptable to food technologists, pharmacologists, toxicologists, and changing pest­ control requirements in progressive food-producing economies. These matters are of gennine concern to increasing numbers of gov­ ernmental agencies and legislative bodies around the world, for some of these chemicals have resulted in a few mishaps from improper use. Ade­ quate safety-in-use evaluations of any of these chemicals persisting into our foodstuffs are not simple matters, and they incorporate the considered judgments of many individuals highly trained in a variety of complex biological, chemical, food technological, medical, pharmacological, and toxicological disciplines. Worldwide concern in scientific, industrial, and governmental com­ munities over traces of toxic chemicals in foodstuffs and in both abiotic and biotic environments has justified the present triumvirate of specialized publications in this field: comprehensive reviews, rapidly published progress reports, and archival documentations. These three publications are integrated and scheduled to provide in international communication the coherency essential for nonduplicative and current progress in a field as dynamic and complex as environmental contami­ nation and toxicology. Until now there has been no journal or other publication series reserved exclUSively for the diversified literature on "toxic" chemicals in our foods, our feeds, our geographical surround­ ings, our domestic animals, our wildlife, and ourselves. Around the world immense efforts and many talents have been mobilized to tech­ nical and other evaluations of natures, locales, magnitudes, fates, and toxicology of the persisting residues of these chemicals loosed upon the world. Among the sequelae of this broad new emphasis has been an inescapable need for an articulated set of authoritative publications where one could expect to find the latest important world literature produced by this emerging area of science together with documenta­ tion of pertinent ancillary legislation. Front Matter....Pages i-ix Humic substances reactions involving bipyridylium herbicides in soil and aquatic environments....Pages 1-26 Pesticides residues in medicinal plants in Poland....Pages 27-44 Residues of dithiocarbamate fungicides and their metabolites on plant foods....Pages 45-67 The presence and cycling of pesticides in the ecosphere....Pages 69-87 Behavior of pesticides in the environment: “Environmental Chemodynamics”....Pages 89-116 Some physico-chemical principles involved in the adsorption of the organic cation paraquat by soil humic materials....Pages 117-146 Back Matter....Pages 147-158