Pesticides use worldwide

Approximately 90 percent of all pesticides used worldwide are used in agriculture, food storage, or shipping. Because of a growing world population, there is pressure to increase and preserve the food supply by using pesticides and other agricultural chemicals. 

Nevertheless, due to the increased number of pesticides used worldwide and the variety and eomplexity of food matrices, the use of ultra-fast separations is not enough to develop fast analytical methods for the analysis of pesticide residues in food. Besides, multi-residue screening methods able to analyze not only target but nontarget or even unknown compounds, minimizing the sample manipulation, are dananded. Thus, sample extraction and clean-up treatments must also be optimized when considering... 

One reason for the rapid growth in the use of pesticides worldwide has been the "Green Revolution" (5), Although there have been some benefits from pesticide use in agriculture, they also cause significant environmental and public health problems. The same is true in public health where Insecticides have been used to control malaria. However, today Increased resistance to insecticides in mosquitoes and Increased resistance to drugs by the malarial parasite are resulting in an explosive increase of malaria worldwide (5). 

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. 

Modem agriculture uses worldwide about 2.5 million tons of pesticides annually (Wijnands 1997), and out of such quantity only about 0.4% reaches the targeted pests, according to Pimentel (Pimentel 1995), while losses through volatilization are on the order of 80-90% (Taylor and Spencer 1990). 

Figure 11.1 Worldwide pesticide use inl999 (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. 

Mills and Hoffmann (1992) investigated ultrasonic degradation of parathion. Parathion (0,0-diethyl O-p-nitrophenyl triphosphate) is a major pesticide used in large quantities worldwide. Organophosphate esters such as parathion have been used as alternatives to DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides however, the organophosphate esters are not rapidly degraded in natural waters. At 20°C and pH 7.4, parathion has a hydrolytic half-life of 108 days and its toxic metabolite, paraoxon, has a similar half-life of 144 days. Ultrasonic irradiation of 25 mL of parathion-saturated, deionized water solution was conducted in a water-jacketed, stainless-steel cell with a Branson 200 sonifier operating at 20 kHz and 75 W/cm2. The temperature of the sonicated solution was kept constant at 30°C. All sonolytic reactions were carried out in air-saturated solution. The concentration of the parathion hydrolysis product p-nitrophenol (PNP) was determined in alkaline solution with a Shimadzu MPS-2000 UV /visible spectrophotometer. 

Since their commercial introduction in the early 1960s,. V-methyIcarhamate pesticides (carbaryl, carbofuran (CF), methiocarb, etc.) have been used worldwide as substitutes for OCs because of their excellent efficiency as insecticides and nematicides, their relatively low mammalian toxicities in... 

A common goal of pesticide regulators worldwide is harmonization of the approaches and methods that they use. At its core, the concept of harmonization encompasses a willingness to work towards convergence of these approaches and methods, while recognizing that region-specific considerations will continue to play a role in some exposure assessments. 

The chemical industry spans many countries of the world and chemicals are used worldwide. Despite the plethora of regulations on chemicals, many countries do not have adequate legislation or the necessary infrastructure to ensure their safe use. To help overcome this situation there is an international initiative for wide sharing of information and to provide support through training programmes and technical expertise. The Rotterdam Convention on the prior informed consent procedure for certain hazardous chemicals and pesticides in international trade, adopted in 1998, is an example. Other international agreements worthy of mention... 

Pesticides are widely used worldwide in agriculture, public health, and several indoor conditions. Current evidence related to pesticide autoimmunogenic potential is summarized in Table 8. Hexachlorobenzene is the most intensively studied pesticide in the context of autoimmunity, and it will therefore be addressed separately at the end of this section. 

During the past 40 years large quantities of chlorinated organic compounds have been manufactured for use worldwide. Some of these compounds, such as the pesticides DDT, Lindane and pentachlorophenol, were purposely Introduced into the environment to control various noxious or harmful plant and animal pests (1 ). Others, such as polychlorinated biphenyls, contaminated the environment through use or as waste from manufacturing processes ( ). Some, such as 2,3,7,8-TCDD, were unknowingly Introduced as contaminants of other compounds or preparations (1 ). 

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