Pesticides use in the

J., U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, personal communication, 1989). The United States has fewer recorded pesticide poisonings per unit weight of applied pesticide than in other countries. For Instance, the U.S. has only about l/50th the number of world poisonings but uses about one-fifth of all the pesticide used in the world. Thus, it appears that the U.S. program to regulate the use of pesticides is more effective than in most parts of the world. 

In addition to poisoning humans, pesticides affect agricultural ecosystems and spread beyond into surrounding terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. As a result, detrimental environmental effects follow pesticide use in the United States. Some of these are delineated below ... 

From this analysis it is clear that in addition to their benefits, the use of pesticides in food production not only causes serious public health problems but also considerable damage to vital agricultural and natural ecosystems in the United States and world. A conservative estimate suggests that the environmental and social costs of pesticide use in the United States total about 4 billion each year. Worldwide the yearly environmental and public health costs are probably at least 100 billion. This is several times the 18 bllllon/yr spent on pesticides in the world. 

This analysis has demonstrated that pesticide use in the world could be reduced by approximately 50% without any reduction in crop yields (in some cases increased yields) or the food supply. This effort would require applying pesticides only-when-necessary plus using various combinations of the nonchemical control alternatives currently available (34). Although food production costs might Increase slightly (0.5% to 1%), the added costs would be more than offset by the positive benefits to public health and the environment (15). 

Short, P. and Colbom, T. (1999). Pesticide use in the US and policy implications A focus on herbicides. Toxicology and Industrial Health 15, 240-275. 

The primary focus of FIFRA is to provide federal control of pesticide distribution, sale, and use. Under FIFRA, the ERA was given authority to study the consequences of pesticide usage. FIFRA requires that all pesticide uses in the United States be registered by ERA. Registration assmes that pesticides will be properly labeled and that if produced and used in accordance with specifications, pesticides will not cause unreasonable harm to the environment. ... 

David Pimentel et al. Assessment of Environmental and Economic Impacts of Pesticide Use. In The Pesticide Question, 47-84. David Pimentel and Hugh Lehman, eds. New York Chapman and Hall, 1993. Source for India 4 pesticides savings and David Pimentel et al., Environmental and Economic Impacts of Reducing U.S. Agricultural Pesticide Use. Source for cosmetic perfection. 

Further, the authors have carefully examined and documented the public health and environmental impacts of pesticide use in the USSR. The USSR was the largest country by territory in the world and the use of pesticide here was enormous. As the authors have shown, this happened mostly because the USSR s Communistic rulers decided at the end of the 1960 s — to turn all chemical weaponry plants (constructed in the beginning of the cold war) to pesticide production. With rich government subsidies, pesticides were distributed through all collective farms The Soviet official policy, the chemicalisation of agriculture, was an attempt to overcome its prominent ineffectiveness in crop production. 

Table 1.2. Growth in the number of pesticides used in the USSR [3]...

Each pesticide used in the USSR had the same history permit, realization that a mistake was made, ban. The only variable in all of these histories was the length of time required to understand that a mistake had been made when the permit was issued. When removing the pesticide from circulation, officials dted several reasons wen/ high toxicity (aldrin, dieldrin, parathion, demeton,... 

Table 1.7. Evolution of Pesticide Use in the Soviet Union/Russia [3]... 

The pesticide storage situation in the 1960-70s was typical of what was found in Uzbekistan only 40% of 1082 storehouses met health and hygiene requirements [A62]. Towards the end of the 1980s, only 75% of the pesticides used in the USSR were provided with storehouses [1]. A significant number of the chemical substance storehouses (20% in Russia, 23% in Ukraine) did not meet elementary health requirements. In Azerbaijan, there were no specialized storehouses for pesticides at all - these chemicals were being stored together with mineral fertilizers [19]. From that time on, very little has changed. 

Based on the real scale of pesticide use in the world, the dispersal of pesticides in dangerous concentrations in the atmosphere over large territories is inevitable. 

The most toxic of the pesticides used in the USSR was the systemic insectoacaricide aldicarb (FD5o=0.93 mg/kg), which breaks down in the soil, forming the also highly toxic sulfoxide and sulfone. The herbicide propanile transforms in the soil into a dioxin-like substance [38]. 

The situation in Tajikistan was the same the amount of pesticides used in the 1970s per hectare of sown fields was 20.6 times higher than... 

Blood was studied in a group of virtually healthy adolescents aged 14-17 from two localities in the Ukraine, where pesticide exposure differed by a factor of three, though the pesticide content in food products, drinking water, air and soil in the experimental zone was not higher than public health standards permitted. In Azerbaijan there was a difference of 100 times in the amounts of pesticides used in the experimental and control localities, while the pesticide contamination of elements of the environment and food products in the experimental zone was 2-50 times higher than acceptable levels [A97]. Table 3.6 shows the results. 

Damaskin V.I. Gigienicheskoye obosnovaniye profilakticheskikh meropriyatiy v svyazi s primenyeniyem pestitsidov v stepnoy zone yuga Ukrainy (Health Implications for Preventive Measures Connected With Pesticide Use in the Steppe Region of Southern Ukraine) Dis.. ..Candidate of Medical Sciences. Kiev, 1979. 24 pp. 

Used industrially as a chemical intermediate in the production of rayon, carbon tetrachloride, xanthogenates, flotation agents, and pesticides used in the cold vulcanization of vulcanized rubber, in adhesive compositions for food packaging as a solvent for phosphorus, sulfur, selenium, bromine, iodine, fats, resins, rubbers, waxes, lacquers, camphor, resins and in the production of optical glass, paints, enamels, varnishes, paint removers, tallow, putty preservatives, rubber cement, soil disinfectants, explosives, rocket fuel, and electronic vacuum tubes. 

This high agriculture activity compromises the chemical and ecological status of the Ebro delta. Pesticides used in the area migrate into the delta building up, together with the pollution produced by some industries, a contamination that can be dangerous to its both fauna and flora, and this contamination increases when water from the rice fields is drained into the delta [17]. 

Figure 11.2 Pesticide use in the U.S. in 1999 (kilograms of active ingredient applied). (Adapted from EPA (2002), Pesticide Industry Sales and Usage. 1998 and 1999 Market Estimates, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C.)...

Agricultural pesticide use in the United States is about 1.2 billion pounds of active ingredient each year and total pesticide use is close to 6 billion pounds. Worldwide agricultural pesticide use is about 5 billion pounds of active ingredient each year. 

Our discussion of pesticides has focused primarily on insecticides. In the United States the primary use of pesticides is in the form of herbicides, those pesticides used to control weeds. Approximately 70% of the pesticides used in the United States are herbicides and 20% are insecticides. The use and development of herbicides parallels that of insecticides. The first herbicides were inorganic metal compounds and salts. During World War II organic herbicides were synthesized and their use increased dramatically. One of the first major classes of herbicides synthesized in the mid-1940s was phenoxyaliphatic acids. As this name implies, the phenoxyaliphatic acids contain the benzene ring, oxygen, and an aliphatic acid. The two most common phenoxyaliphatic acids are 2,4 dichlorophenoxyacetic acid, called 2,4-D and 2,4,5 trichlorophenoxyacetic acid, known as 2,4,5-T (Figure 18.10). The numbers in these... 

Table 3 Estimates of total pesticide use in the Great Lakes Basin (in kg) in 1995 ...

Gianessi, L.P. and N. Reigner (2002). Pesticide use in the US crop production 2002. National Pesticide Use Database 2002. CropLife Foundation, Washington, DC 20005. 

Gianessi, L.P. and M. Marcelli (2000). Pesticide use in the US crop production 1997. National Summary Report, Washington, DC. Goolsby, D.A. and W.A. Battaglin (1995). Occurrence and distribution of pesticides in streams of the midwestem US. In M.L. Leng, ed., Agrochemical Environmental Fate - State of the Art. Boca Raton, FL Lewis-CRC Press, pp. 159-173. 

Mowbray, D.L., 1988. Pesticide use in the South Pacific. UNEP Regional Seas Reports and Studies No. 89 and SPREP Topic Review. No. 26, UNEP, p.275. 

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