Pesticide is a word used to several different substances with insecticide, fungicide, herbicide, rodenticide (against rodents, such as rats) properties, to control pests - organisms that can negatively impact crops. Ideally, those compounds are harmful solely to what they aim to control, but often this is not the case.
Many benefits were globally collected from the use of pesticides and those compounds have been responsible to reduce agriculture loss from weeds, diseases and insect pests, over the last decades.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, a considerable amount of pesticides still being used are considered Highly Hazardous (HHPs) due to high toxicity and negative effects even at exposure to small concentrations. Pesticides might present a direct impact on humans and in some countries like Brazil, they are considered a major public health problem nowadays. According to Raquel Maria Rigotto, from the Federal University of Ceará, in Brazil, the Brazilian pesticide market experienced an expansion of around 190% in the last decade, putting the country at the top of the world rank in 2008.
Not only pesticides can affect human health, though, but there is also a controversial debate accusing pesticides of being one factor contributing to population declines in bees, according to Dave Goulson in a study published in Science magazine in 2015.
For example, herbicides are used to minimize weed problems in most of the crop plantations, but this use can reduce the availability of flowers for pollinators, once it promotes the growth of a single crop, commonly known as monoculture. Not only through food availability for bees, but pesticides also cause direct toxic effects that aren´t entirely known, but can result in high mortality in overwintering honey bees, reduction of learning and immune response. One common example is Glyphosate, a common herbicide used globally that can affect common bacterias present in bee guts, affecting metabolism, weight gain and increase mortality.
Would you like to read more?
FAO on Hazardous Pesticides
Pesticide Action Network
Goulson, D., Nicholls, E., Botías, C., & Rotheray, E. L. (2015). Bee declines driven by combined stress from parasites, pesticides, and lack of flowers. Science, 347(6229). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1255957
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