Mapeamento de áreas com potencial de contaminação por uso de agrotóxicos e o panorama das intoxicações exógenas no noroeste do Rio Grande do Sul

Abstract

Agricultural activities carried out with the use of pesticides can cause contamination of soil, water and human beings. When found in surface and underground water used for supply and various purposes, pesticides can trigger acute or chronic exogenous poisoning in living beings. The objective of this study was to evaluate the vulnerability to water contamination caused by the use of pesticides through a database with information on soil types, main crops, the main pesticides and their characteristics, and use geotechnologies to map the results as the agricultural area of the municipalities; in parallel, the research aimed to build the panorama of exogenous poisonings regarding different classes and indicators, in order to investigate the situation of the causes of poisoning by pesticides and chemical products. The database formed for municipalities of the 2nd Regional Health Coordination in the Northwest of Rio Grande do Sul, was used to carry out the study of the potential of pesticides to be leached into ground and surface water or to be transported dissolved in water, as well as the estimation of adsorption and mobility of pesticides in the soil, respectively, using the Groundwater Ubiquity Score (GUS), GOSS method and Attenuation and Retarding Factor (AF/RF). For the panorama of exogenous poisonings, a database was structured with sources from DataSUS, Demographic Census, Agricultural Census and Municipal Agricultural Production (PAM) and, using the R software, Pearson's correlation was applied between the variables and graphs were generated for data analysis. The results indicate that the pesticides that should be primarily monitored are: atrazine, 2,4-D, imidachlorprid, simazine and prothioconazole, as they present a medium/high risk classification in the applied models. However, the ecological vulnerability of agribusiness and economic voracity puts at risk the population that uses any pesticide, which is correlated with the increase in drug consumption, including cases of poisoning. Regarding the panorama of exogenous poisonings, poisonings occurred accidentally, in a work environment with a single acute exposure, occurring with the highest incidence in ten years in the municipalities of Tenente Portela, Alpestre and Novo Tiradentes. Of the total of 341 registered poisonings, 175 poisonings come from pesticides (herbicides, fungicides and insecticides) and chemical products. Thus, there is a need to develop public initiative programs that include technical assistance in order to minimize the impact of pesticide use on the environment and human health.