Percentage of reported monitoring sites with pesticides exceeding thresholds in a) surface waters and b) groundwater in Europe, weighted by country area

The figures show the percentage of monitoring sites with exceedance of effect thresholds or quality standards, set by European or national regulatory standards, and weighted by country area to reduce the impact of uneven data reporting.

For surface waters, EU environmental quality standards and (in the absence of those) national regulatory standards were used, reflecting the lowest ecotoxicologically-based effect threshold. Effect thresholds were identified for 116 out of 237 pesticides (49%). The exceedances included here refer to those 116 pesticides.

For groundwater, the Groundwater Directive quality standard of 0.1µg/l was used to identify exceedance. Twelve non-relevant metabolites (nrM) were excluded from the assessment.