Non-first Order Degradation and Time-dependent Sorption of Organic Chemicals in Soil

Pesticides are essential tools for crop protection and disease prevention. These agricultural chemicals (and their associated uses) continue to be subject to increased regulatory scrutiny, even though modern pesticides have become safer, more effective, and target specific. Pesticide persistence, off-target movement to ground and surface water systems, and potential for impacting non-target organisms are the major focus for regulatory assessments. Sorption and degradation are among the dominant processes that determine the fate and ecological risk of pesticides in the environment.

Non-First Order Degradation and Time-Dependent Sorption of Organic Chemicals in Soil addresses pesticide sorption and degradation processes in the context of regulatory evaluation, yet with a special focus on the chemistry-soil-environment interactions to better quantify the increasingly observed non-first-order and time-despondent behavior in the environmental fate studies. Offering key insights from leading experts in the field, this volume will be a valuable resource for professionals and scholars involved in pesticide research.

Wenlin Chen is a senior scientist at Syngenta Crop Protection, LLC,Greensboro, North Carolina, U.S.A. His area of work focuses on mathematical descriptions of pesticide environmental fate and transport and applications to water quality and ecological risk assessments. He holds a Ph.D. in soil science from Cornell University and has authored/co-authored more than 60 peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, and invited lectures/presentations. He has contributed to the development of pesticide exposure models, scenarios, and risk assessment methods in the U.S. and internationally through several scientific work groups including the FIFRA Environmental Model Validation Task Force, FQPA Drinking Water Exposure Work Group, Environmental Exposure Work Group, and IUPAC Advisory Committee on Crop Protection Chemistry. His current interests include kinetics of rate-limited metabolism, sampling design, and statistical modeling of environmental monitoring data.

Aleksandar Sabljic is Head of Department of Physical Chemistry at Institute Rudjer Boskovic in Zagreb, Croatia since 2002. His research interests and expertise span a wide range of subjects but his recent research is focused on modeling sorption of organic chemicals in soil, their biodegradation in aquatic and soil environments and tropospheric degradation of volatile/semi-volatile chemicals. After receiving Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Zagreb (Croatia), he was the Fogarty International Fellow at National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland (1981-1985). For an extended period (1988-1998), he was Visiting Scientist at Forschunszentrum Karlsruhe and University of Krlsruhe in Germany.

Cryer received a B.S. in chemical engineering from Texas A&M University, and master's and doctorate degrees in chemical engineering from Cornell University, with emphasis in applied math and hydrodynamic stability. Steve is a strong industrial leader advocating new approaches and scientific advancement to address issues relevant for the agrochemical community, authoring or coauthoring over 80 peer-reviewed papers and conference abstracts, 6 book chapters, multiple invited presentations and guest lectures, and expert panel participation in areas of wet granulation, pesticide runoff, and volatility of organic chemicals from soil. Steve has been on the adjunct faculty at several Indiana University Departments and has 25 years of experience with Dow AgroSciences.

Dr. Rai Kookana is a Chief Research Scientist with CSIRO and is also affiliated as a Professor in the School of Agriculture, Food and Wine (University of Adelaide). With a Ph.D. from the University of Western Australia (1989), he has been involved in pesticide research for last 25 years. Dr. Kookana's current research interests include fate of nanoparticles, pesticides and micropollutants (e.g. pharmaceuticals and personal care products) in the environment. He has published 175 journal papers, 15 book chapters, with an H-Index (ISI) of 33 and a total citation > 4500. Dr Kookana has edited three books on environmental contaminants. He is on the editorial boards of 4 international journals. In 2012, Dr. Kookana was elected Fellow of the Soil Science Society of America.