Assessing pesticide exposure from treated turf

AGRO 33

Jeffrey J. Doherty, jjdoherty@vasci.umass.edu, Environmental Toxicology and Risk Assessment, University of Massachusetts, 639 N. Pleasant St., Morrill 1 N420 Univ. of Mass, Amherst, MA 01003, Raymond A. Putnam, rap@vasci.umass.edu, Massachusetts Pesticide Analysis Laboratory, University of Massachusetts, 639 North Pleasant Street, Morrill 1 N420, Massachusetts Pesticide Analysis Laboratory, Amherst, MA 01003, and J. Marshall Clark, jclark@vasci.umass.edu, Department of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, University of Massachusetts, 639 Notrh Pleasant St., 311B Morrill I, Amherst, MA 01003, Amherst, MA 01003.
Exposure of golfers to pesticides following their application to turfgrass is of concern to regulators, turfgrass professionals, and consumers. Accurate assessment of golfer exposure to pesticides requires knowledge of the availability of pesticide residues following application, transfer and absorption kinetics of these residues, and major routes of entry into the body. Determination of the actual transfer of measured environmental residues to golfers during a round of golf and the subsequent penetration of the transferred residues was achieved by measuring the exposure of volunteers using dosimetry (pesticide residues on full body cotton suits and personal air samplers) and biomonitoring (measuring urinary metabolites), respectively. The central predictor of exposure in our model is the transfer factor (TF), which is the ratio between the amounts collected on the dosimeter suits versus dislodgeable foliar residues (DFR). This pesticide dose can then be used to calculate a Hazard Quotient (HQ) using the US EPA's established reference dose (Rfd). Hazard quotients calculated to date range from <0.01 for cyfluthrin and chlorothalonil to 0.55 for mecoprop-p, indicating levels of exposure at which adverse effects are unlikely (i.e., HQ less than or equal to 1.0).