In the past few years, many countries have increased environ
mental protection with new rules and more stringent regulations.
The United Nations has issued a list of chemicals that are banned
or severely restricted in use. Many of the compounds on this list
are pesticides.
1
Considerable attention is focused on regulating
the allowable limits for pesticide residues in food and drinking
water. For example, the European Union (EU) directives set a
maximum admissible concentration of 0.1µg/L for each pesticide
in drinking water.
2
Consequently, new methods of analysis are
required to quantify a great number of pesticides at such low levels
of concentration in water.
3