[Pesticide pollution of groundwater and drinking water by the processes of artificial groundwater enrichment or coastal filtration: underrated sources of contamination].

The research objective of this study is to monitor the degree of pesticide pollution in public drinking waters and to characterise the pathways by which these substances get into potable waters. Public drinking waters, raw waters, ground waters, and surface waters in an area with intensive agriculture were analysed for pesticides and nitrate during the years 1987-1992. The monitoring reveals that only potable waters of water works using the process of artificial ground water recharge are polluted by pesticides. The very influence of surface water on the degree of pesticide contamination can be shown up to the wells. Wells that are influenced by bank filtration or infiltration contain significantly (P < 0.001) higher amounts and a greater number of substances than pure ground water wells. Most often triazines and phenylureas are analysed. Among the tested water works the artificial ground water recharge is the main factor for the input of pesticides into the aquifer and the drinking water. Percolation experiments, and parallel seasonal changes of pesticides and nitrate in raw and infiltration water document a high mobility during the subsoil passage and an easy vulnerability of the aquifer. There is no correlation between pesticides and nitrate. So nitrates are not suited as an indicator for pesticide pollution. Almost all tested surface waters, including channels, contain pesticides in highly varying concentrations during the whole year and are thus always a possible source for an input into the recharged ground water. In addition to agricultural runoffs a remarkable contamination of rivers with the herbicide diuron caused by municipal waste waters can be observed in the summer. Because of insufficient elimination of herbicides like triazines and phenylureas during bank filtration or infiltration and because of the high loads of surface waters with pesticides a minimisation of pesticide losses within the whole catchment area, especially of runoffs into surface waters, and the abstention from the use of slowly degradable herbicides in cities, on railways or in private gardens are inevitable. At the present time, however, a protection of ground and public drinking water from pesticide contamination can only be achieved by treating surface or ground waters with activated carbon.