Public health problems, from pesticide

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. 

Forage crops have been shown to contain small amounts of pesticides, not only as a result of direct application but from being grown in soil previously treated. The amounts, admittedly often very small, may appear in the milk of dairy cattle receiving such feed. In fact, because of the concentration of fat-soluble pesticides in the butterfat, it may be possible to detect some of them in the milk when the levels in the feed are too low to determine by the methods now available. For example, Westlake et al. (25) have reported the presence of heptachlor epoxide in the milk of cows grazed on chlordan-treated pasture when the amount of this compound present on the forage was too small to detect. The heptachlor epoxide probably originated from a small amount of heptachlor present as an impurity in the chlordan. While this is unimportant from a public health standpoint, it does present a problem for milk producers and law enforcement personnel. 

OPs and CMs arc the most commonly used pesticides throughout the world. This is partly due to their lack of residue persistence in the environment and in exposed individuals and also due to lesser resistance development in insects compared to the orgaiiochlorine pesticides. From the public health standpoint, in today s world the use of pesticides is a mu.st rather than an option. For example, sporadic incidence.s of West Nile virus are reported in many countries, whereas malaria is still a major problem in developing countries. In both cases, the common vector is the mosquito. Without the use of pesticides against vectors of diseases, the impact on human and animal health would be devastating and the economic loss would be enormous. On the one hand, the world is greatly benefited from the use of... 

FAO Press releases FAO Problem of obsolete pesticide stocks deserves greater attention by donor countries and industry 98/15 Dangerous pesticide stocks removed from Zambia and the Seychelles — large stocks continue to threaten health and environment, FAO says 97/31 and FAO says huge stocks of obsolete pesticides threaten environment and public health in developing countries FAO/3634, 5 June 1996... 

The attention of those concerned with occupational exposure to pesticides has turned from immediate acute effects to chronic effects. The California regulations lists chronic health effects as a criteria for special reentry studies. The EPA, in their first public draft of reentry guidelines, also lists chronic effects as a criteria to be utilized in setting reentry intervals. One problem with this is determining what constitutes a chronic health effect and what information should be used It is clear that animal studies which unequivocably demonstrate onco-... 

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