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LARRAMENDY, M. L.; SOLONESKI, S.

Toxicity and hazard of agrochemicals

INTECH Publisher

Lugar: Rijeka; Año: 2015; p. 7 - 8

Agrochemicals are used worldwide to both improve and protect crops and livestock. Fertilizers are applied to obtain good yields from crops, which are protected from insects and disease by the timely use of pesticides. Farm animals as well as human beings are similarly protected from parasites and disease by sanitary treatments such as vaccination, oral dosing, immersion dipping, etc. The word ?use? should be interpreted in its widest sense to include the use by any person, whether employer, worker, or family, and should also include any associated activity such as handling, storage, transport, spillage, and disposal.Nowadays, the continual use of agrochemicals and exposure to large amounts of from a number of different sources, including occupational exposure, self-poisoning, home and garden use, veterinary and medicinal use, spray drifts, and residues in household dust, food, soil, and drinking water, among others, can cause environmental pollution and many side effects, such as health hazards and fatalities in the population. Additionally, there is another side effect of extra operational costs for waste treatment in many parts of the world. Today, developed nations have systems already in place to register agrochemicals and control their trade and use. However, in undeveloped nations, even those so-called emerging ones, this is not always the situation, and in most cases they are uncontrolled. In the latter, several old, nonpatented, more toxic, environmentally persistent, and inexpensive agrochemicals are still being used extensively, causing serious health problems, both acute and chronic, as well as local and global environmental contamination. Regardless that many hazardous agrochemicals have been demonstrated to be carcinogenic, mutagenic, toxic for reproduction, and endocrine disruptors in several biotic matrices, their commercialization and employment continues today worldwide, particularly in these undeveloped countries. There is a wealth of literature available about agrochemicals, and the information base is spreading as a result of their wide use over the planet. It pertains to agricultural economics; the technology of manufacture; standards on transport, distribution, sale, and application; and a variety of other aspects including harmful effects on workers who use agrochemicals and their impact on the general environment. Despite this, both confirmed and unconfirmed reports have revealed that many workers, particularly in developing countries, continue to be poisoned or killed mainly on account of unsafe practices when using agrochemicals. In spite of the existing information, including that dealing with safety and health aspects, the evidence points to the difficulty of providing safe working conditions for persons handling agrochemicals. Safety and health concerns deserve closer attention because agricultural production is increasing in most parts of the world. Food supplies will have to be more than doubled in the next 30 years to meet even the minimum requirements of the world population. A fact that should be considered and always present in mind is that the use of agrochemicals will also necessarily increase concomitantly.This book, Toxicity and Hazard of Agrochemicals, is intended to provide an overview of toxicology that examines the hazardous effects of common agrochemicals employed every day in our agricultural practices. We aimed to compress information from a diversity of sources into a single volume. The chapters considered in this book include details of a large variety of agrochemical-related topics about ecological and human risk assessment after agrochemical exposure, providing insights into the difficulties and challenges of performing adequate risk assessments; an update of the involvement of pesticides and metalloestrogens in the development of breast cancer; an update of the production, use, environmental occurrence, and molecular mechanisms of toxicity, genotoxicity, and carcinogenicity, as well as adverse human health effects, associated with malathion exposure; a chapter describing the apparent nontoxicity to both wildlife and humans exposed to glyphosate and glyphosate-based herbicides; a study of the genotoxic effects of the commercial neonicotinoid insecticide clothianidin in chronically intraperitoneally exposed mice; an update of the environmental risks of the active principle fungicide pyrimethanil, one of the most frequently used in vineyards, as well as its commercial formulation on aquatic invertebrate animals, using a mesocosm approach; and finally, a detailed study employing several biomarkers in some freshwater invertebrates as bioindicators to study the toxicity of four important classes of actual pesticides. Several researchers have contributed to the publication of this book of high importance to researchers, scientists, engineers, and graduate students who make use of these different investigations to understand the hazard implications in the misuse of conventional and nonconventional agrochemicals. Furthermore, it is hoped that the information in the present book will be of value to those directly engaged in the handling and use of agrochemicals, and that this book will continue to meet the expectations and needs of all interested in the different aspects of human and environmental risk toxicities.