The impact of rice pesticides on the aquatic ecosystems of the Sacramento River and Delta (California)

Abstract

Since the early 1980s, when molinate was demonstrated to have killed carp in agricultural drains, an intensive research effort has been undertaken to assess the impact of rice pesticides on aquatic ecosystems in the Sacramento River and Delta. No impact has been found that can be clearly attributed to rice pesticides. However, the rice insecticides methyl parathion and carbofuran, and probably also bufencarb, reached levels in the River and Delta that, based on laboratory bioassays, would have been toxic to aquatic microinvertebrates and, in the case of bufencarb, to early life stages of striped bass. Reductions in microinvertebrate populations could have impacted higher organisms in the aquatic food chain such as striped bass and chinook salmon. Bufencarb was not used after 1981. Since then, changes in the management of the remaining rice pesticides have resulted in dramatic decreases in the levels of these chemicals in the River and Delta. Levels achieved today have no known toxicity to aquatic organisms. As releases of rice pesticides were reduced to achieve nontoxic levels in the River and Delta, however, commensurate recoveries of striped bass and chinook salmon did not occur, suggesting that rice pesticides may have had little or no role in the decline of these species. © Springer-Verlag 1999.