**1. Introduction**

296 Herbicides – Properties, Synthesis and Control of Weeds

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The application of herbicides to agricultural soil is a well established and effective practice to control weed growth. Another areas of herbicide application are roads and railways where herbicides are used to mantain the quality of the track and a safe working environment for railway personnel (Torstenson, 2001). Some of total herbicides are used in urban areas, or as algicides in paints and coatings (Lindner et al.,2000). Among the wide range of herbicides available, phenyl-urea and triazine derivatives represent a prominent group, the variety and use of which having increased markedly during the past decades. Many of the compounds in both families are biorecalcitrant, i.e. their microbiological degradation is slow or totally ineffective, they therefore persist in the environment for many weeks or even months after application.

The partial water solubility of triazines and phenylurea herbicides results in their leaching or washing into surface and ground waters from the place of application.

For many important classes of pesticides including phenylurea and triazine herbicides, photoinitiated transformation may be the only relevant elimination process in surface waters. In waste-waters, advanced photochemical oxidation processes (EPA Handbook, 1998) using oxidative agents/UV combination have been under study.
