Pesticides are poisons

We cannot describe all aspects of pesticides as environmental hazards, but we intend to address certain aspects of this problem many books are available (Carson, 1962 Ecobichon, 2001 Edwards, 1973 Emden, 1996 Graham and Wienere, 1995 Mellanby, 1970 Ratcliff, 1967 Walker et al., 1996). It is also easy to find opinions and facts on the Internet. Our problem is that we meet people who believe that cigarette smoking causes cancer because the tobacco plants are sprayed with insecticides and who at the same time are convinced that food produced without pesticides is always safe. We are therefore often engaged in debates as defenders, and not as critics, to the unnecessary and unsafe use of pesticides, as we should be. But pesticides are poisonous to man, animals, plants, and sometimes to all types of life, as many of us have experienced. 

There have been thousands of serious poisonings and fatalities caused by pesticides and pesticides are a constant threat to millions in the more illiterate parts of the rural populations in many countries. A quick search on the Internet, for instance, gave this information from Pesticide Action Network North America (http //panna.igc.Org/resources/gpc/gpc 200008.10.2.24. dv.html)  

Growth of the agrochemical industry in China has been accompanied by problems related to quality control, unsafe application of chemicals, and pesticide residues. According to a report from the Chinese National Statistics Bureau, 48,377 pesticide poisoning cases, including 3,204 fatalities, were reported in 27 provinces in 1995. Another government estimate placed total farm worker fatalities due to pesticides at 7,000-10,000 annually. 

Their sources seem trustworthy, but difficult to validate. Ecobichon (2001) writes  

On the worldwide basis, intoxications attributed to pesticides have been estimated to be as high as 3 million cases of acute, severe poisoning annually, with as many or more cases and some 220,000 deaths. These estimates suffer from inadequate reporting of data for developing countries, but they may not be too far off the mark. 

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Educate workers about proper use and handling of pesticides. Let them be aware of the fact that pesticides are poisonous chemical substances. 

Pesticides are potentially poisonous, noxious or polluting substances, and therefore the NRA is responsible for controlling and preventing pesticide pollution of water. Furthermore, the NRA is responsible for ensuring water quality meets standards set in a number of EC Directives, some of which specify values for pesticides. 

A large number of domestic animals are poisoned each year by pesticides and must be destroyed. Additionally, significant amounts of meat and milk are contaminated with pesticides and must be removed from the market place (51). The yearly cost of these losses is estimated to be at least 30 million. 

As pesticides are applied, large numbers of honey bees and wild bees are poisoned resulting in not only a diminished honey crop, but perhaps more important, reduced crop pollination that is vital to agricultural production (51). The estimated yearly cost of reduced pollination and reduced honey production is about 230 million (Pimentel, D., in manuscript). 

Many pesticides are neurotoxicants poisoning the nervous system. A number of pesticides are acetyl cholinesterase inhibitors (Serat and Mengle 1973). Generally, pesticides determination has been performed by GC since the 1960 s (Morrison and Durham 1971 Fournier et al. 1978). There are no reference materials for pesticides in urine or serum, although as with PAHs there are a number biological matrices certified for the content of various pesticides available for environmental food and agriculture analysis and which may have some application in clinical chemistry. 

Pesticides and the equipment with which they are applied are so fundamentally associated that it is astonishing to see how often these two items are separated. Pesticides are frequently sold in a foreign area with complete disregard of the available means of application yet the whole future market depends mainly upon the proper distribution of the materials. The want of suitable equipment can be a very serious factor in retarding the use of economic poisons. 

Pesticides were massively used, especially in the first decades after WWII, thus becoming one of the largest risk factors to human life and health, as well as to the entire natural environment. In 1962, Rachel Carson [2] described the terrible consequences of using pesticides in a way that the general public could understand for the first time. She also showed the most important difference between pesticides and other pollutants pesticides are not production waste, but are introduced into the environment deliberately. For the first time, the well-founded hypothesis was stated that, with time, poisonous and foreign chemical substances could make the Earth uninhabitable. 

Pesticides are chemicals used to eliminate unwanted organisms. Common targets for pesticides include insects, weeds (herbicides), fungi, and rodents. Poisoning from pesticides often affects professional exterminators, agricultural workers, and consumers (Table 7.7). More than half of the poisonings due to agricultural pesticides affect children. 

Unlike other chemical pollutants of the environment, pesticides are purposeful environmental contaminants added to achieve specific goals in agriculture, industrial production, public health, forestry, road maintenance and construction, etc. Hence the term "economic poisons" originally employed, but later substituted by the less pejorative "pesticides". Pesticides are classified commercially... 

Organochlorine pesticides are nerve poisons in both insects and mammals. Action mechanisms are complex and not yet fully understood. They have been shown to have estrogen-like effects (ref. 84a), to inhibit testicular growth and secondary sex characteristics in cockerels and mice (DDT), to induce persistent estrus in rats, and to affect fertility, gestation, lactation and survival times. 

Pesticides are chemical agents used to kill pests such as insects, snails, spiders, birds, or fish. Any living thing can be a pest at times many weeds are simply plants growing in unwanted places, and prairie dogs look cute in the zoo, but their eating habits can cause widespread damage to cropland or livestock. Pesticides are, however, seriously poisonous substances. 

Mammalian toxicity levels to pyrethroid pesticides are extremely low, and chances for poisoning would be almost nonexistent unless animals ingested formulations that had not yet been mixed for application. 

Hydroxybenzoate preservatives inactivate atropine sulfate in physical mixtures. Atropine can be used for treating acetylcholine poisoning. Organophosphorous pesticides are treated by use of diazepam, phenothiazines, and physostigmine.149... 

Pesticides are used to control or kill organisms that compete with humans for food, spread disease, or are considered a nuisance. Herbicides are pesticides that attack weeds insecticides attack insects fungicides attack molds and other fungus. Sulfur was used as a fungicide in ancient times. The development and use of new pesticides has exploded over the last 60 years, but these pesticides are often poisonous to humans. 

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