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.
Similar content being viewed by others
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.
References
Pathak, V. M. et al. Current status of pesticide effects on environment, human health and it’s eco-friendly management as bioremediation: A comprehensive review. Front. Microbiol. 13 (2022).
Hassaan, M. A. & El Nemr, A. Pesticides pollution: Classifications, human health impact, extraction and treatment techniques. Egypt. J. Aquat. Res. 46, 207–220 (2020).
Hancock, T. C. et al. Pesticide Fate and Transport throughout Unsaturated Zones in Five Agricultural Settings, USA. J. Environ. Qual. 37, 1086–1100 (2008).
Wendell, A.-K. et al. A spatio-temporal analysis of environmental fate and transport processes of pesticides and their transformation products in agricultural landscapes dominated by subsurface drainage with SWAT+. Sci Total Env 945, 173629 (2024).
Maggi, F., Tang, F. H. M. & Tubiello, F. N. Agricultural pesticide land budget and river discharge to oceans. Nature 620, 1013 -+ (2023).
Ahmad, M. F. et al. Pesticides impacts on human health and the environment with their mechanisms of action and possible countermeasures. Heliyon 10 (2024).
Shekhar, C. et al. A systematic review of pesticide exposure, associated risks, and long-term human health impacts. Toxicol. Rep. 13, 101840 (2024).
Aktar, W., Sengupta, D. & Chowdhury, A. Impact of pesticides use in agriculture: their benefits and hazards. Interdiscip. Toxicol. 2, 1–12 (2009).
Tudi, M. et al. Exposure Routes and Health Risks Associated with Pesticide Application. Toxics 10, 335 (2022).
Sánchez-Bayo, F. & Wyckhuys, K. A. G. Worldwide decline of the entomofauna: A review of its drivers. Biol. Conserv. 232, 8–27 (2019).
Goulson, D., Nicholls, E., Botías, C. & Rotheray, E. L. Bee declines driven by combined stress from parasites, pesticides, and lack of flowers. Science (1979). 347 (2015).
Astaykina, A., Streletskii, R., Maslov, M., Krasnov, G. & Gorbatov, V. Effects of Three Pesticides on the Earthworm Lumbricus terrestris Gut Microbiota. Front. Microbiol. 13 (2022).
Pelosi, C. et al. Residues of currently used pesticides in soils and earthworms: A silent threat? Agric. Ecosyst. Environ. 305, 107167 (2021).
Burch, E. et al. Assessing the Effects of Pesticides on Aquacultured Fish and Ecosystems: A Comprehensive Environmental Health Review. Fishes 10, 223 (2025).
Rohani, M. F. Pesticides toxicity in fish: Histopathological and hemato-biochemical aspects – A review. Emerg. Contam. 9, 100234 (2023).
Ray, S. & Shaju, S. T. Bioaccumulation of pesticides in fish resulting toxicities in humans through food chain and forensic aspects. Environ. Anal. Health Toxicol. 38, e2023017 (2023).
Wang, J. et al. Pesticide-related risks embodied in global soybean trade. Cell Rep Sustain 1, 100055 (2024).
Tang, F. H. M., Wyckhuys, K. A. G., Li, Z., Maggi, F. & Silva, V. Transboundary impacts of pesticide use in food production. Nat. Rev. Earth Environ. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-025-00673-y (2025).
Dhouib, I. et al. From immunotoxicity to carcinogenicity: the effects of carbamate pesticides on the immune system. Environ Sci Pollut Res 23, 9448–9458 (2016).
Gerunova, L. K., Bardina, E. G., Gerunov, T. V. & Sechkina, I. V. Pesticides as endocrine disruptors and neurotoxicants. IOP Conf. Ser. Earth Environ. Sci. 315, 052049 (2019).
Tang-Péronard, J. L., Andersen, H. R., Jensen, T. K. & Heitmann, B. L. Endocrine-disrupting chemicals and obesity development in humans: A review. Obesity Reviews 12, 622–636 (2011).
Li, X. et al. Exposure to environmental endocrine disruptors and human health. J. Public Health Emerg. 1, 8–8 (2017).
Apú, N., Rommes, F., Alvarado-Arias, M., Méndez-Rivera, M. & Lizano-Fallas, V. Endocrine-disrupting pesticide exposure relevant to reproductive health: a case study from Costa Rica. Environ. Monit. Assess. 197, 559 (2025).
Van Maele-Fabry, G., Duhayon, S. & Lison, D. A systematic review of myeloid leukemias and occupational pesticide exposure. Cancer Causes & Control 18, 457–478 (2007).
Suwannarin, N. et al. Association between Haematological Parameters and Exposure to a Mixture of Organophosphate and Neonicotinoid Insecticides among Male Farmworkers in Northern Thailand. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 18, 10849 (2021).
VoPham, T. et al. Pesticide exposure and liver cancer: a review. Cancer Causes & Control 28, 177–190 (2017).
Norouzi, F., Alizadeh, I. & Faraji, M. Human exposure to pesticides and thyroid cancer: a worldwide systematic review of the literatures. Thyroid Res. 16, 13 (2023).
Cavalier, H., Trasande, L. & Porta, M. Exposures to pesticides and risk of cancer: Evaluation of recent epidemiological evidence in humans and paths forward. Int. J. Cancer 152, 879–912 (2023).
Yang, Y. et al. Climate change exacerbates the environmental impacts of agriculture. Science (1979). 385 (2024).
Li, Z. & Jennings, A. Worldwide Regulations of Standard Values of Pesticides for Human Health Risk Control: A Review. Int J Environ Res Public Health vol. 14 (2017).
Brüggemann, M. et al. Measuring pesticides in the atmosphere: current status, emerging trends and future perspectives. Environ. Sci. Eur. 36, 39 (2024).
Chow, R. et al. A review of long-term pesticide monitoring studies to assess surface water quality trends. Water Res. X 9, 100064 (2020).
Sabzevari, S. & Hofman, J. A worldwide review of currently used pesticides’ monitoring in agricultural soils. Sci Total Env 812, 152344 (2022).
Huang, Y. & Li, Z. Assessing pesticides in the atmosphere: A global study on pollution, human health effects, monitoring network and regulatory performance. Environ. Int. 187, 108653 (2024).
Huang, Y. & Li, Z. Global mapping of freshwater contamination by pesticides and implications for agriculture and water resource protection. iScience 112861, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2025.112861 (2025).
Li, Z. A health-based regulatory chain framework to evaluate international pesticide groundwater regulations integrating soil and drinking water standards. Environ. Int. 121, 1253–1278 (2018).
Jennings, A. A. & Li, Z. Scope of the worldwide effort to regulate pesticide contamination in surface soils. J. Environ. Manage. 146, 420–443 (2014).
Wolfram, J., Stehle, S., Bub, S., Petschick, L. L. & Schulz, R. Water quality and ecological risks in European surface waters – Monitoring improves while water quality decreases. Environ. Int. 152, 106479 (2021).
Lewis, K., Tzilivakis, J., Green, A. & Warner, D. Pesticide Properties DataBase (PPDB). University of Hertfordshire, https://sitem.herts.ac.uk/aeru/ppdb/en/index.htm (2006).
Pesticide Action Network, N. A. Pesticide Action Network (PAN). http://www.pesticideinfo.org/ (2009).
Kim, S. et al. PubChem 2025 update. Nucleic Acids Res. https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkae1059 (2025).
Sun, Y. et al. Geographical Distribution and Prevalence of Borrelia Genospecies in Eurasian Ticks. Sci. Data 12, 1530 (2025).
Wu, X., Guo, Y., Zhang, Y. & Li, S. A geospatial dataset of PFOS and PFOA occurrence records in China’s multi-media environments (2021–2024). Sci. Data 12, 1529 (2025).
ESA. LUCAS - Land use and land cover survey. 2026 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=LUCAS_-_Land_use_and_land_cover_survey#What_sort_of_information_is_compiled.3F (2026).
Huang, Y. & Li, Z. Global dataset of pesticide pollution and environmental quality standards for exposure and risk assessment (2010–2020). Figshare, https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.30271873 (2026).
USEPA. Regional Screening Levels (RSLs)—User’s Guide (November 2023). https://www.epa.gov/iris (2023).
Porta, G. M. et al. Pesticides application rate maps in the European Union at a 250 m spatial resolution. Sci. Data 12, 725 (2025).
LUCAS. LUCAS 2022 TOPSOIL data. European Commission https://esdac.jrc.ec.europa.eu/content/lucas-2022-topsoil-data (2025).
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
Contributions
Huang: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Methodology, Software, Data collection, Data curation. Li: Writing – review & editing, Methodology, Funding acquisition, Conceptualization.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary information
Rights and permissions
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/.
About this article
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
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-026-06987-w


