Water Safety And Health
Rarely has imidacloprid been found in surface or well water. When it has, the amounts are miniscule (0.5 – 2 parts per billion) and 100’s to 1000’s of times lower than what the EPA considers to be a level they would be concerned about. Never has the amount found been higher than 6.7 parts per billion and that happened only one time after a farm spill in New York.
To put this in perspective, a 150-pound adult could drink 21,000 gallons of water containing 3 ppb of imidacloprid every day for 70 years and still not reach levels shown to have effects on humans in lab studies.
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EPA Standards
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The EPA sets very conservative standards for chemicals in drinking water that are protective of human health. In the case of Imidacloprid, EPA adopted a standard of 1775 ppb for chronic exposure. This standard is hundreds of times higher than the largest amount ever found.
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Degradation in Water
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Imidacloprid breaks down very quickly in the presence of sunlight and water with a half-life of about 3 hours. In water with no sunlight, imidacloprid breaks down continuously, but a bit more slowly. The final form that imidacloprid breaks down into is carbon dioxide.
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Moving Through Soil
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Imidacloprid has an affinity for clay and loam soil particles and it binds very tightly to organic matter. The Kow and Koc values are in a range where translocation in soil and from soil is still negligible under ordinary conditions, but where mobility is sufficiently high for systemic action into the roots of plants or within plants for pest control. This makes it the perfect material for treating trees while protecting the environment.
