REVIEW: An overview of the environmental risks posed by neonicotinoid insecticides
By Dave Goulson. 2013
1,690 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Summary 1. Neonicotinoids are now the most widely used insecticides in the world. They act systemically, travelling through plant tissues and protecting all parts of the crop, and are widely applied as seed dressings. As neurotoxins with high toxicity to most arthropods, they provide effective pest control and have numerous uses in arable farming and horticulture. 2. However, the prophylactic use of broad-spectrum pesticides goes against the long-established principles of integrated pest management (IPM), leading to environmental concerns. 3. It has recently emerged that neonicotinoids can persist and accumulate in soils. They are water soluble and prone to leaching into waterways. Being systemic, they are found in nectar and pollen of treated crops. Reported levels in soils, waterways, field margin plants and floral resources overlap substantially with concentrations that are sufficient to control pests in crops, and commonly exceed the LC50 (the concentration which kills 50% of individuals) for beneficial organisms. Concentrations in nectar and pollen in crops are sufficient to impact substantially on colony reproduction in bumblebees. 4. Although vertebrates are less susceptible than arthropods, consumption of small numbers of dressed seeds offers a route to direct mortality in birds and mammals. 5. Synthesis and applications. Major knowledge gaps remain, but current use of neonicotinoids is likely to be impacting on a broad range of non-target taxa including pollinators and soil and aquatic invertebrates and hence threatens a range of ecosystem services.
Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Genetics, Insect Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bc73a0ca5ee992849e57711d759120a36267daf1
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Citations in the corpus
- Bee declines driven by combined stress from parasites, pesticides, and lack of flowers (2015, background): “As a result, current levels of pesticide use are generally high and are not always justified by evidence that they are necessary to maintain yield (66, 155).”
- Intellectual Property and Consolidation in the Seed Industry (2015, background): “More recently, it has become difficult for farmers to buy commodity seeds without neonicotinoid coatings, despite little evidence of its effectiveness when applied so indiscriminately (Goulson, 2013).”
- Understanding the Effects of Sublethal Pesticide Exposure on Honey Bees: A Role for Probiotics as Mediators of Environmental Stress (2020, background): “However, seed coatings can also cause collateral damage because some pesticides remain active in plant tissue, including nectar and pollen (Krupke et al., 2012; Goulson, 2013; Alburaki et al., 2015; Samson-Robert et al., 2017).”
- Routes of Pesticide Exposure in Solitary, Cavity-Nesting Bees (2018, background): “Formulations of this relatively new pesticide family are the most widely used insecticides in the world (Goulson 2013, Lundin et al.”
- A review of the direct and indirect effects of neonicotinoids and fipronil on vertebrate wildlife (2014, methodology): “9 or 1 mg of active ingredient, respectively (Goulson 2013).”
- Measuring the economic value of pollination services: principles, evidence and knowledge gaps. (2015, background): “For instance, a decision on whether to maintain the current EU ban on neonicotinoid pesticides could be informed if the economic benefits of restricting the use of such pesticides, in terms of foregone pollination services, could be compared with the economic costs of such a policy, such as declines”
- Impact of Neonicotinoids to Aquatic Invertebrates—In Vitro Studies on Mytilus galloprovincialis: A Review (2020, background): “No less important is the presence of little data regarding the effects of neonicotinoids when interacting with other stressors, such as other pesticides, diseases and eating disorders, aspects that undoubtedly influence the health of bees [8,14,15].”
- Environmental fate and exposure; neonicotinoids and fipronil (2014, methodology): “Based on data in Anon (2006), Goulson (2013) calculated the half-life of 1,250 days for loam in the UK.”
- A short history of insecticides (2015, background): “Today the most popular insecticides are neonicoti-noids (Yamamoto 1999; Goulson 2013).”
- Endophytes vs tree pathogens and pests: can they be used as biological control agents to improve tree health? (2019, background): “However, neonicotinoids face severe restrictions on their use in many countries due to associations with negative impacts on bees (Goulson 2013).”
- Pesticide Residues and Bees – A Risk Assessment (2014, background): “ii) by exposure to residues present in pollen, wax, nectar, honey and guttation drops, which may result either from direct spray contamination of flowers, translocation through the treated plants or soil [20,54], or direct contamination during treatment of the combs (for honey bees only).”
- Review of the chemical control research on Halyomorpha halys in the USA (2017, background): “Moreover, their proliferated use can lead to outbreaks of secondary pests such as aphids, scales, and mites (Rock 1979; Roush and Hoy 1978; Gerson and Ephraim 1987; Kuhar et al. 2012d; Leskey et al. 2012a; Rice et al. 2014).”