Herbicide contamination by the 1993 Great Flood along the Mississippi River

The Great Flood of 1993 inundated more than 355,000 ha of Illinois cropland, creating great concern for the possible contamination of farmland by herbicides. The objective of this study was to assess the herbicide contamination of floodwaters and farmland due to the great flood of 1993. Floodwater samples were collected between August 5 and December 20, 1993, at the Horseshoe Lake State Game Reserve in Alexander County, Illinois, USA. Water and suspended sediment were tested separately for the more commonly used herbicides in Illinois and the midwestern USA: alachlor, atrazine, and cyanazine. These herbicides were detected in the floodwater samples, but concentrations were all below the health advisory concentration of 3 mu g/L established for drinking water by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. No herbicides were detected in the suspended sediment. After the recession of the flood, soil samples from flooded and non-flooded corn fields were collected for comparison. Soil samples taken from two out of three sampling locations had a 0.4 to 0.8 mu g/kg increase in atrazine at the flooded verses the non-flooded sites. Concentrations were 500 to 1,000 times lower than the recommended 1 mg/kg rate at which this herbicides typically applied to soil.