Pesticide Exposure, Safety Issues, and Risk Assessment Indicators

By C. Damalas, Ilias Eleftherohorinos. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2011

2,209 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Pesticides are widely used in agricultural production to prevent or control pests, diseases, weeds, and other plant pathogens in an effort to reduce or eliminate yield losses and maintain high product quality. Although pesticides are developed through very strict regulation processes to function with reasonable certainty and minimal impact on human health and the environment, serious concerns have been raised about health risks resulting from occupational exposure and from residues in food and drinking water. Occupational exposure to pesticides often occurs in the case of agricultural workers in open fields and greenhouses, workers in the pesticide industry, and exterminators of house pests. Exposure of the general population to pesticides occurs primarily through eating food and drinking water contaminated with pesticide residues, whereas substantial exposure can also occur in or around the home. Regarding the adverse effects on the environment (water, soil and air contamination from leaching, runoff, and spray drift, as well as the detrimental effects on wildlife, fish, plants, and other non-target organisms), many of these effects depend on the toxicity of the pesticide, the measures taken during its application, the dosage applied, the adsorption on soil colloids, the weather conditions prevailing after application, and how long the pesticide persists in the environment. Therefore, the risk assessment of the impact of pesticides either on human health or on the environment is not an easy and particularly accurate process because of differences in the periods and levels of exposure, the types of pesticides used (regarding toxicity and persistence), and the environmental characteristics of the areas where pesticides are usually applied. Also, the number of the criteria used and the method of their implementation to assess the adverse effects of pesticides on human health could affect risk assessment and would possibly affect the characterization of the already approved pesticides and the approval of the new compounds in the near future. Thus, new tools or techniques with greater reliability than those already existing are needed to predict the potential hazards of pesticides and thus contribute to reduction of the adverse effects on human health and the environment. On the other hand, the implementation of alternative cropping systems that are less dependent on pesticides, the development of new pesticides with novel modes of action and improved safety profiles, and the improvement of the already used pesticide formulations towards safer formulations (e.g., microcapsule suspensions) could reduce the adverse effects of farming and particularly the toxic effects of pesticides. In addition, the use of appropriate and well-maintained spraying equipment along with taking all precautions that are required in all stages of pesticide handling could minimize human exposure to pesticides and their potential adverse effects on the environment.

Subfields: Food Science, Plant Science, Pollution

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Citations in the corpus

Farmers’ Exposure to Pesticides: Toxicity Types and Ways of Prevention (2016, background): “Regarding the general population, individuals may be exposed to pesticide residues in food and drinking water on a daily basis or to pesticide drift in residential areas close to spraying areas [11].”
Pesticide use and risk perceptions among farmers in the cotton belt of Punjab, Pakistan (2015, background): “Increasing attention is focused nowadays upon the impact that most farming practices have on the environment with emphasis on more sustainable methods of crop production (Ronald and Adamchak, 2010; Damalas and Eleftherohorinos, 2011).”
The Hidden and External Costs of Pesticide Use (2016, background): “Many pesticides can damage human health (Damalas and Eleftherohorinos 2011 ) and, for this reason, high doses over short periods (acute poisoning) and lower doses over longer periods of time (chronic exposure) may have an impact on human health.”
Agriculture Development, Pesticide Application and Its Impact on the Environment (2021, background): “It is widely accepted that pesticides enter both the surface water and groundwater by direct application for the control of aquatic weeds and aquatic insects, percolation and runoff from agricultural production fields, drift from agro-allied industrial wastewater, discharge from wastewater from clea”
Exposure to pesticides and the associated human health effects. (2017, methodology): “Repeated application of pesticides leads to loss of biodiversity and increased pest resistance, while its effects on other species facilitate pest resurgence (Damalas and Eleftherohorinos, 2011).”