Agricultural production is generally associated with the use of pesticides, their physicochemical characteristics, soil conditions and the environment will determine their fate, as well as the potential for contamination of water bodies. In order to predict environmental contamination by pesticides, parameters and mathematical models are utilized to assess the risk of contamination of groundwater and surface water. For this reason, the objective of this study was estimate the probability of contamination of groundwater and surface waters by pesticides based on their physicochemical characteristics with the aid of preexisting mathematical models and parameters. To analyze the risk of surface water contamination, the Goss method was used, which as composed by two groups: pesticide potential transport dissolved in water and adsorbed to the sediment. The parameter used to evaluate the leaching potential were those suggested by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the GUS Index. The results obtained allow to conclude that the use of models to predict the behavior of pesticides is useful to obtain an estimate of the risk of environmental contamination, as some monitoring results confirm the tendency of the behavior of certain products into the environment.
physico-chemical; transport; mathematical models
