Pesticides in fog
- 1 February 1987
- journal article
- Published by Springer Nature in Nature
- Vol. 325 (6105), 602-605
- https://doi.org/10.1038/325602a0
Abstract
The discovery of the very acidic nature of fog and clouds has created much interest in sampling, analysing, and elucidating the chemistry of fog, principally because an understanding of the chemical transformations leading to acid fog may provide important clues to the origin of acid rain. Recently, the knowledge of the chemistry of fog has expanded to include carbonyl compounds, volatile organic acids, and alkyl sulphonates. We have discovered that a variety of pesticides and their toxic alteration products are present in fog, and that they occasionally reach high concentrations relative to reported rainwater concentrations. In our experiments, we were able to measure the air-water distribution coefficients of pesticides between the liquid fog and the interstitial gas phase. These measurements reveal that some chemicals are enriched several thousandfold in the suspended liquid fog droplets compared to equilibrium distributions expected from Henry's Law coefficients for pure aqueous solutions.Keywords
This publication has 20 references indexed in Scilit:
- Identification of Hydroxymethanesulfonate in Fog WaterScience, 1986
- A field investigation of physical and chemical mechanisms affecting pollutant concentrations in fog dropletsTellus B: Chemical and Physical Meteorology, 1984
- Capillary gas chromatography determination of volatile organic acids in rain and fog samplesAnalytical Chemistry, 1984
- Collection of airborne polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and other organics with a glass fiber filter-polyurethane foam systemAtmospheric Environment (1967), 1984
- The occurrence of bisulfite-aldehyde addition products in fog- and cloudwaterJournal of Atmospheric Chemistry, 1984
- Fogwater chemistry in an urban atmosphereJournal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 1983
- High-Volume Dichotomous Virtual Impactor for the Fractionation and Collection of Particles According to Aerodynamic SizeAerosol Science and Technology, 1983
- Carbonyls in urban fog, ice fog, cloudwater and rainwaterAtmospheric Environment (1967), 1983
- Determination of cloud water acidity at a mountain observatory in the Adirondack Mountains of New York StateJournal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 1980
- A multiclass, multiresidue analytical method for pesticides in waterArchives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, 1977