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Summary
Pesticides[1] were assessed against effect or quality thresholds between 2013 and 2020. One or more pesticides was detected above its effect threshold at 15-26% of all surface water monitoring sites each year. Exceedances were mainly caused by the insecticide imidacloprid in surface waters, and the herbicides MCPA, metolachlor and metazachlor. Exceedances of one or more pesticides were detected at between 4% and 10% of groundwater monitoring sites, mainly by atrazine and its metabolites. No trends can be derived at this time and between-year changes may not be significant.
[1] Pesticides include both active substances from plant protection products and biocides as well as their relevant metabolites.
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Please start with a sentence telling the reader the aim of the indicator, what should it show. The current situation of pesticide pollution? In Europe? In the countries? The temporal development? In Europe? In the countries? Considering all pesticides ? or only a selection?
With this methodology trends can also not be identified in the future years because of the missing consistency of the considered data. (see additional comments later on).
Please, tell the reader which pesticides and metabolites you use for the indicator and which you not use e.g., by linking to some lists. The reader, not working in details with pesticides will not be aware of that some metabolites are classified as non-relevant. If you take Denmark, we report in the yearly national groundwater monitoring program (https://www.geus.dk/vandressourcer/overvaagningsprogrammer/grundvandsovervaagning) that about 30% of the groundwater monitoring sites exceed thresholds, but your table in Figure 2 states that it is 4%. This huge difference is mainly caused by the non-relevant metabolites, which is part of the Danish monitoring program. As an example taken from the latest report the exceeding for monitoring sites analysed in 2020 were for CAS_6339-19-1, Chloridazon desphenyl 17% , CAS_3984-14-3, N,N-dimethylsulfamide 6%, CAS_2008-58-4, 2,6-dichlorobenzamide 6 %, and CAS_288-88-0, and 1H-1,2,4-Triazole 9%. In Denmark also the non-relevant metabolites are evaluated with quality standard of 0.1 µg/L.