The toxicity of herbicides to non-target aquatic plants and algae: assessment of predictive factors and hazard.

Widely used herbicides sometimes inadvertently contaminate surface waters. In this study we evaluate the toxicity of herbicides to aquatic plants and algae and relate it to environmental herbicide concentrations and exposure scenarios, herbicide formulation and mode of action. This was done experimentally for ten herbicides, using the aquatic macrophyte Lemna minor L. and the green alga Pseudokirchneriella subcapitata (Korshikov) Hindak, supplemented with a database study comprising algae toxicity data for 146 herbicides. The laboratory study showed that herbicide formulations in general did not enhance herbicide efficacy in the aquatic environment. The Roundup formulation of glyphosate proved to be the only exception, decreasing the EC(50) of the technical product for both L. minor and P. subcapitata approximately fourfold. Comparison of the sensitivity of L. minor and P. subcapitata revealed up to 1000-fold higher sensitivity of L. minor for the herbicides categorized as weak acids (pK(a) < 5), emphasizing the importance of higher plants in hazard assessment. Database analyses showed that no herbicide group, categorized by site of action, was significantly more toxic than another. Synthetic auxins were the exception as they are virtually non-toxic to unicellular algae. There was no strong correlation between toxicity to algae and K(ow) of the herbicides, not even within groups having the same site of action. Evaluating all data, few herbicides were toxic at concentrations below 1 microg l(-1), which is the 99.9th percentile of the herbicide concentrations measured in the Danish surveillance programme. Joint action of several herbicides cannot however be excluded.