Salinas Valley

In 1936 Sinox, a dinitro selective weed killer, was introduced and widely used, not only in cereal crops but in peas, onions, flax, and other important crops. In the early forties a private dealer in the Salinas Valley of California discovered the selective herbicidal use of stove oil in carrot crops. As war conditions made labor scarce and military demands called for increased production, this proved a great boon to the vegetable growers. 

Figure 4. Simulated and measured 1,3-dichloropropene (1,3-D) volatilization flux in response to atmospheric pressure changes at Salinas Valley. Reprinted with permission from Chen et al. (1995). Copyright 1995, American Chemical Society...

Zartarian, V.G., J. Streicker, A. Rivera, C. Cornejo, S. Mohna, O. Valdez and J.O. Leckie, (1995). A Pilot Study to Collect Micro-Activity Data of 2-4 Year-Old Farm Labor Children in Salinas Valley, California, 7. Expo. Anal. Environ. Epidem., 5, 21-24. 

Figure 7 The variations of chloride, calcium, strontium (in mgL ), and Sr/ Sr ratios during intrusion of seawater into the coastal aquifer of Salinas Valley, California, USA. Note the linear relationships between all constituents, which indicates conservative mixing relationships between freshwater and modified seawater. These relationships suggest that base-exchange reactions occur at early stage of seawater intrusion and that Sr in exchange sites has a high Sr/ Sr ratio (source Vengosh et aL, 2002a).

Vengosh A., Gill J., Davisson M. L., and Huddon G. B. (2002a) A multi isotope (B, Sr, O, H, C) and age dating ( H- He, " C) study of groundwater from Salinas Valley, Cahfornia hydrochemistry, dynamics, and contamination processes. 

A California groundwater survey in 1982 showed no pesticides (i.e., DBCP, EDB, carbofuran, or simazine) in the Santa Maria or Salinas Valley groundwater basins (76). DBCP was present in 6 of 23 wells in the Upper Santa Ana basin (0.1-8 ppb), and in 21 of 166 wells in the San Joaquin basin (0.1-10 ppb). The authors were unable to correlate well characteristics with DBCP concentration in water. Simazine was also found in 5 wells, carbofuran in 1 well, and EDB in 2 wells. 

Table II. Ambient Concentrations ( ig/m of Methyl Bromide in the Salinas Valley, CA Resulting from Soil Fumigation Sources...

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