On the other hand, the disadvantages of widespread use of pesticides are significant. They include contaminations and deaths of domestic animals, loss of. They include pollution and death of domestic animals, loss of natural pest antagonists, resistance to pesticides, decrease in honey bees and pollination, losses to adjacent crops, losses of fisheries and birds, and pollution of groundwater. Soil fertility is affected by death or damage to microorganisms caused by pesticides.
In addition, some pesticides induce immunotoxicity in humans, which can lead to immunosuppression, hypersensitivity (allergies), autoimmune diseases and inflammation; children may be especially susceptible to the adverse effects of exposure to pesticides. People who regularly work with pesticides, such as farmers, have a higher risk of cancer. Thousands of non-lethal poisonings and cases of cancer each year are attributable to pesticides. Nearly 1.8 billion people involved in agricultural activities use pesticides to protect their products.
More than 1 billion pounds of pesticides are used in the United States each year and approximately 5.6 billion pounds worldwide. Many people pesticides for lawn and garden, grocery stores and in 26% around their homes. Since 1960, the use of pesticides has proven to be more beneficial than any other method of pest control. But the actual amount of pesticides needed by crops is less than 5% of the total amount used, and the rest remains in the soil and is transferred to groundwater.
Many other disadvantages of pesticides uproot questions about the use of these chemicals. Pesticides can contaminate soil, water, grass, and other vegetation. In addition to killing insects or weeds, pesticides can be toxic to a host of other organisms, including birds, fish, beneficial insects, and non-target plants. Insecticides are generally the most toxic class of pesticides, but herbicides can also pose risks to non-target organisms.
Many pesticides can not only kill beneficial organisms, but also pests. Pollinators such as bees or natural predators, such as ladybugs, may be susceptible to pesticides; pesticides can also be toxic to wildlife or pets. If mishandled or misused, some pesticides can also be toxic to humans. Using pesticides can destroy beneficial organisms or wildlife and therefore harm both your garden and the environment.
Humans have not yet discovered the exact disadvantages of pesticides, as chemicals are causing soil fertility to deteriorate. While the use of herbicides and pesticides can have many advantages, there are also some problems associated with those substances. More specifically, the term agrochemicals includes herbicides (chemicals that are toxic to weeds), pesticides (chemicals that are toxic to insects), fungicides (chemicals that are toxic to fungi, a group of organisms that cause diseases in plants and animals), rodenticides (products chemicals toxic to rodents), and antibiotics administered to livestock. In other words, chemical pest control acts as a type of artificial selection for pesticide resistance.
In addition, in the environment, most pesticides undergo photochemical transformation to produce metabolites that are relatively non-toxic to both humans and the environment (Kole et al. From the above analysis we can conclude that there are many advantages and disadvantages of pesticides and herbicides. The overall effectiveness of the program and its economic benefits are greatly enhanced even when pesticides are used in a way that reduces the likelihood that pests will become resistant to the chemicals used to combat them. The most popular solution to this problem is in an alternative method often used to chemical pesticides, biological control.
Certain environmental chemicals, including pesticides called endocrine disruptors, are known to cause their adverse effects by mimicking or antagonizing natural hormones in the body and their exposure to low and long-term doses has been postulated to be increasingly linked to human health effects, such as suppression immune, hormonal impairment, decreased intelligence, reproductive abnormalities and cancer (Brouwer et al. When resistance is not an issue, pesticides are generally very effective in controlling pests if the other disadvantages are taken into account. Excessive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides has effects on soil organisms that are similar to the excessive use of antibiotics by humans. Atrazine, malathion and diazinon, highly toxic chemicals identified as high priority pesticides by Verrin et al.
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