Chapter 7 - Pesticides, Good or Bad??

Pesticides,Good or Bad?

What is pesticide?

Pesticide can be defined as any substance or mixture of substances intended for preventing, destroying, repelling, or lessening the damage of any pests.

There are many different types of pesticides.

1) Bactericides for the control of bacteria
2) Fungicides for the control of fungi and oomycetes
3) Herbicides for the control of weeds
4) Insecticides for the control of insects - these can be Ovicides, Larvicides or Adulticides
5) Miticides for the control of mites
6) Molluscicides for the control of slugs and snails
7) Nematicides for the control of nematodes
8) Rodenticides for the control of rodents
9) Virucides for the control of viruses

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advantages_and_disadvantages_of_pesticides_and_biological_control_in_agriculture


Many people claimed that pesticides were the cause of their harm. Like for example the people in the East of England, they claim to be victims of those chemically sprayed crops. This health concern is a problem as there is a help to go about helping it. Even though the government had recommend farmers to inform the public whenever they are spraying, the farmers do not usually care.

This spraying of chemically is hard to prevent from harming the nearby residents as there is no buffer zone separating them. Many people have become victims of these pesticides. There were attempts from environment to improve on the buffer zone of these farms with the houses of people but it was turned down.

However, there are also many farmers complaining that it was the chemical sprays that let the crops have their quantity and quality. Thus the government is actually ignoring requests of environmentalists to make changes the buffer zone level. They are actually protecting the farmers in this way.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/politics_show/3873761.stm

From what I know, the effects of pesticide

Effects of Pesticide

Firstly, pesticide is something used for the control pest. It can prevent the crops from being harm from pest as when the pest eats these pesticides, they actually die. Thus this prevents the crops from being eaten or destroys from insects. This would be the good point of the pesticides.

However there is many other side effect of the crops. Run off of these pesticide is very dangerous to the river as it does pollute them. For example, this pesticide can create eutrophication. This is when the amount of bacteria increases in great numbers blocking the amount of sunlight entering the river. With this problem, aquatic plants are not able to make food through photosynthesis as they are not able to obtain enough sunlight. Thus they will die in this process. As the plants die, the fish in the river is not obtain to have enough oxygen as there is not enough plants to maintain the oxygen level underwater. So they are also affected.

Not only that, too much pesticide applied on the crops is also not good. As the crops are eaten, they might not be very clean and we human or animals actually get some of this pesticide into our body and this is harmful to us.

My point of view

From what I can see, I think the government should restrict the buffer zone that it must be at least a certain distance to prevent any more harm done to the people nearby those farms. Furthermore, they should conduct good check to ensure that these crops and minimum pesticide level and the crop are safe for eating.

This way, there would be lesser people tuning due to pesticide. Pesticide is actually something good. Only when we misuse it, it would then cause harm to us.

19-05-07 11.14pm