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Global dataset of pesticide pollution and environmental quality standards for risk assessment (2010–2020)
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  • Published: 02 March 2026

Global dataset of pesticide pollution and environmental quality standards for risk assessment (2010–2020)

  • Yabi Huang1 &
  • Zijian Li  ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9291-59661 

Scientific Data , Article number:  (2026) Cite this article

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We are providing an unedited version of this manuscript to give early access to its findings. Before final publication, the manuscript will undergo further editing. Please note there may be errors present which affect the content, and all legal disclaimers apply.

Subjects

  • Environmental chemistry
  • Environmental impact

Abstract

Pesticides are widely used in agriculture, and their residues are frequently detected across the environmental medium, becoming a pressing global problem that affects the ecosystem and public health. Here, we present a comprehensive dataset covering pesticide residues and regulatory standards in three major environmental media (air, soil, and water), compiled from nearly 700 publications and official databases reporting data between 2010 and 2020. Analysis shows that pesticide data are mainly concentrated in China, Europe, and the United States, and current environmental quality standards can cover the current monitored pesticide species. This unified resource can support future multimedia exposure modeling, regulatory threshold comparison, and geographic prioritization of pesticide risk.

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Data availability

The data is deposited on Figshare (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.30271873).

Code availability

All analyses are conducted using ArcGIS (10.8) and Origin (2024). No specific custom code has been produced during the collection of this dataset.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32472598) and the Shenzhen Science and Technology Program (JCYJ20250604174437049).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Public Health (Shenzhen), Shenzhen Campus of Sun Yat-sen University, Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen, Guangdong, 518107, China

    Yabi Huang & Zijian Li

Authors
  1. Yabi Huang
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  2. Zijian Li
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Contributions

Huang: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Methodology, Software, Data collection, Data curation. Li: Writing – review & editing, Methodology, Funding acquisition, Conceptualization.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zijian Li.

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Table (download DOCX )

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Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.

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Cite this article

Huang, Y., Li, Z. Global dataset of pesticide pollution and environmental quality standards for risk assessment (2010–2020). Sci Data (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-026-06987-w

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  • Received: 15 October 2025

  • Accepted: 25 February 2026

  • Published: 02 March 2026

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-026-06987-w

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