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THE TERM "PESTICIDE" is a composite term that includes all chemicals that are used to kill or control pests. In agriculture, this includes herbicides (weeds), insecticides (insects), fungicides (fungi), nematocides (nematodes), and rodenticides (vertebrate poisons).
Unfortunately, with the benefits of chemistry have also come disbenefits, some so serious that they now threaten the long-term survival of major ecosystems by disruption of predator-prey relationships and loss of biodiversity. Also, pesticides can have significant human health consequences.
While agricultural use of chemicals is restricted to a limited number of compounds, agriculture is one of the few activities where chemicals are intentionally released into the environment because they kill things.
The amount of pesticides in water varies greatly, both geographically and seasonally, based on land use and pesticide use patterns. In agricultural areas, herbicides are the most frequently found type of pesticide in streams and groundwater. In urban areas, there is a greater prevalence of insecticides in streams than in agricultural areas. Pesticide concentrations also vary yearly, based on variations in rainfall, and seasonally, based on agricultural practices.
HEALTH EFFECTS OF EXPOSURES TO PESTICIDES
Pesticides have been linked to a wide range of human health hazards, ranging from short-term impacts such as headaches and nausea to chronic impacts like cancer, reproductive harm, and endocrine disruption.
Acute dangers - such as nerve, skin, and eye irritation and damage, headaches, dizziness, nausea, fatigue, and systemic poisoning - can sometimes be dramatic, and even occasionally fatal.
Pesticides can cause many types of cancer in humans. Some of the most prevalent forms include leukemia, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, brain, bone, breast, ovarian, prostate, testicular and liver cancers. In February 2009, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry published a study that found that children who live in homes where their parents use pesticides are twice as likely to develop brain cancer versus those that live in residences in which no pesticides are used.
Studies by the National Cancer Institute found that American farmers, who in most respects are healthier than the population at large, had startling incidences of leukemia, Hodgkins disease, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, and many other forms of cancer.
There is also mounting evidence that exposure to pesticides disrupts the endocrine system, wreaking havoc with the complex regulation of hormones, the reproductive system, and embryonic development. Endocrine disruption can produce infertility and a variety of birth defects and developmental defects in offspring, including hormonal imbalance and incomplete sexual development, impaired brain development, behavioral disorders, and many others.
Children are particularly susceptible to the hazards associated with pesticide use. There is now considerable scientific evidence that the human brain is not fully formed until the age of 12, and childhood exposure to some of the most common pesticides on the market may greatly impact the development of the central nervous system.