Assessment of imazapic herbicides residues in soil at Sawah Sempadan ricefield and its potential health risk / Wan Nurzahidah Wan Mohd Abd Rahim

Introduction: Weed occurrences is one of the factor that affecting yield potential of rice. The use of pesticides in order to overcome this kind of problem has been increasing over the years. Although the use of pesticides has led to increased agricultural production but, their use has also been associated with several concern, including risk to human health and environment (Bhupander, 2011 ). Methodology: Study location was selected at Block C of Sawah Sempadan ricefield. In this study, 112 samples of soil was analyzed by using HPLC and statistical analysis that is statistical package for the social science (SPSS) version 18 was used. The questionnaires also were distributed among the farmers. Results: The result for chemical parameter found out that the imazapic residues were detected in each of the soil sample collected. The imazapic concentration detected varies in each soil sample. There were statistically significant differences between imazapic concentration and sampling day for both season I and 2 (P<0.05). Health risk assessment found out that there is no adverse health effect (HI<l) associated with the exposure of herbicide via dermal contact. Conclusion: as the conclusion, there was imazapic residues detected in soil but it is assume that it might not cause significant health hazards in future.