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U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
Open-File Report 2007-1369

Pesticides in Air and Rainwater in the Midcontinental United States, 1995—Methods and Data

National Water-Quality Assessment Program

By Michael S. Majewski, William T. Foreman, Richard H. Coupe, Donald A. Goolsby, and Frank W. Wiebe

Abstract

Weekly composite high-volume air and wet-only deposition samples were collected from April through September 1995 at paired urban and agricultural areas in Mississippi, Iowa, and Minnesota, and at a background site in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. This report describes the methods used to collect, analyze, and quality assure the samples, and presents the results of all chemical analyses and quality control procedures. Each sample was analyzed for 49 compounds, including several pesticides not examined in previous atmospheric studies. Eighty-five percent of the herbicides, 70 percent of the insecticides, and 100 percent of the transformation products that were targeted for analysis were detected in one or more samples at each paired site.

Contents

Abstract
Introduction
Site Selection, Description, Criteria, and Identification
Sample Collection Methods
Analytical Methods
Field Data Result
Quality Assurance Program
Summary
References
Appendixes
Tables

This report is available online in Portable Document Format (PDF). If you do not have the Adobe Acrobat PDF Reader, it is available for free download from Adobe Systems Incorporated.

Download the report (PDF, 998 KB)

Document Accessibility: Adobe Systems Incorporated has information about PDFs and the visually impaired. This information provides tools to help make PDF files accessible. These tools convert Adobe PDF documents into HTML or ASCII text, which then can be read by a number of common screen-reading programs that synthesize text as audible speech. In addition, an accessible version of Adobe Reader 8.0 for Windows (English only), which contains support for screen readers, is available. These tools and the accessible reader may be obtained free from Adobe at Adobe Access.

Send questions or comments about this report to the author, Michael Majewski, (916) 278-3086.

For more information about USGS activities in California, visit the USGS California Water Science Center home page.