Farmers use pesticides to keep bugs, mice and other pests from destroying their crops. If you are not a farmer, you will probably never some into contact with pesticides, right?
Wrong.
Have you ever eaten an apple or a peach or a potato? Pesticides were used to help grow those fruits and vegetables, and traces of the pesticides may be inside or on the skin.
Have you ever watched someone give a pet shampoo to a scratching dog to kill its fleas? Pesticides were in the flea bath.
Have your parents ever aimed a can of bug spray at a pesky cockroach or mosquito, or used a can of disinfectant to clean a dirty bathtub? Pesticides were in both those cans.
Pesticides are chemicals that kill pests. People use them to kill harmful insects, weeds, and animals like mice and rats.
Thanks to pesticides, some insect-related diseases like malaria have been nearly wiped out and crops have been saved from destruction. Thanks to pesticides, America has become a land of agricultural plenty.
But pesticides, because they are poisons, can also be dangerous. Particles of sprayed pesticides can float into the air. When it rains, other particles can wash off plants to the ground and from there into ground water. No matter where the pesticides end up -- in the air, on land, in water or on the crops where they were first supplied -- pesticides can cause harm.
Farm workers who use pesticides run the highest risk. If the pesticide touches their skin, or if they breathe fumes from pesticide spray, they can be poisoned. Some researches think that hundreds of thousands of farm workers in the U.S. suffer from pesticide poisoning every year.
People who drink water contaminated with pesticides, or who eat food that contains traces of pesticides (called residue) may also get sick. Some pesticides can cause cancer and birth defects in people.
Even wild animals can die if they eat crops or smaller animals that have come into contact with pesticides.
The "R" factor
People use 10 times more pesticides today than they did 40 years ago. Even so, insects cause more crop damage now than they did then. Why?
Because, over time, "superbugs" develop that can resist killer chemicals. This resistance is known as the "R" factor.
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Sometimes an insect does more than develop resistance to a pesticide. It grows to depend on the pesticide. A species of bee in Brazil actually eats the pesticide DDT! Normally, a deadly dose of DDT for bees is 6 parts per million. Scientist have found that the bees in Brazil accumulate DDT in their bodies to concentrations as high as 42,000 parts per million. That is more than four percent of the bee's total body weight! Yet the bees show no ill effects from the DDT. |
Scientists have identified more than 400 insect pests that can resist one or more pesticides. They have found about 150 species of bacteria and fungi, more that 50 species of weeds, and several species of rodents that have also developed pesticide resistance. When a new pesticide is substituted for an old one, pests often come to resist the second pesticide as well as the first.
Since the pesticide payoff is unpredictable, people are looking for better ways to control pests. Sometimes they bring in natural enemies to eat the pests. Wasps, for example, were used to destroy walnut aphids that once threatened California's walnut groves. Other pest-controlling insects have been used on sugar cane in Hawaii, grain in Michigan, apples in New York and oranges in Florida.
Other methods also help. "Trap crops" -- disposable decoys -- draw pests away from from main crops. Careful breeding produces strong plants that resist pests. Artificial sex smells lure pests in sticky traps. Radiation or hormone treatments stop pest reproduction. Early harvesting bypasses some pest life cycles completely.
Use of all these different methods together is knows as "integrated pest management." That's a fancy name to describe a simple goal: as much as possible, control pests naturally instead of chemically. With integrated pest management, pesticides will still be used, but more carefully and less often.
Protect yourself from pesticides
Never use pesticides yourself!
It is dangerous and it is against the law for children to use pesticides. In fact some pesticides come with child-proof containers. Pest control with pesticides is a job for adults.
Learn to recognize a pesticide by the label on the container. But avoid touching or using pesticide containers, even if they are empty. Spilled pesticides on a container can poison you.
Four key words are found on pesticide labels. These words are something that you should look for:
WARNING
CAUTION
POISON
Try to answer these questions. Some of the answers can be found in the reading above.
