Modeling Exposure to Pesticide Drift in Madison County, Illinois Using GIS and Remote Sensing

This paper examines the potential residential exposure to pesticide drift in Madison County, Illinois. Exposure to agricultural pesticides has been linked to a variety of public health problems. Assessing drift is complex due to the numerous environmental and technical factors that impact its potential to travel. This study integrates land use data from remote sensing and population data to model potential residential exposure to off-target drift. Using corn and soybean landcover, the most commonly planted crops in Madison County, this study estimates exposure to glyphosate and atrazine based on the proposed method. Utilizing buffer zones from population centroids, the total amount of agriculture acreage within each buffer zone is calculated providing a threshold of exposure. The results from the spatial study found that the majority of residents at potential high pesticide drift exposure lived in sparsely populated, rural areas of the county where the majority of corn and soybean were planted. It was found that 3.3% of the county’s population was considered highly exposed, and that when highly populated and metropolitan areas were excluded, 13.57% of the population met the highly exposed criteria. The spatial pattern of exposure in Madison County, Illinois is discussed, as well as a literature review on drift and disease and regulations