Anvi
Nidhi Staff answered 3 years ago
Pesticides are used to protect crops against insects, weeds, fungi and other pests. Almost all conventionally grown vegetables have been sprayed with pesticides, fungicides, preservatives or wax coatings, but some are more contaminated than others.
Pesticides are potentially toxic to humans.
They may induce adverse health effects including cancer, effects on reproduction, immune or nervous systems. Pesticides can cause short-term adverse health effects, called acute effects, as well as chronic adverse effects that can occur months or years after exposure. Examples of acute health effects include stinging eyes, rashes, blisters, blindness, nausea, dizziness, diarrhea and death.
There is pesticide residue in food and water.
Pesticides can run off fields or soak through the ground to enter watercourses. Spraying crops with pesticides, or using pesticides in the soil, can leave some residue on produce. Exposure to pesticides is also common in some workplaces and outdoors during crop spraying.
India is the 4th largest producer of pesticides in the world
There are 292 pesticides registered in India.
Pesticides worth Rs.6000 crore are consumed in India
(B)-BHC is the most commonly used pesticide in India.
It accounts for roughly half of the total amount of pesticides used in India. BHC is an organochlorine insecticide and acute poisoning usually leads to features of neurotoxicity like altered mentation and seizures. Other features like liver dysfunction, metabolic acidosis, and hematological and gastrointestinal toxicities have occasionally been described.
Total pesticide consumption is the highest in Maharashtra, followed by Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana.
The most common way most infants, children and adults are exposed to pesticides is by eating them on and in our food. Workers in agriculture and occupational settings touch and breathe in pesticides, putting them at risk for acute and chronic poisoning.
Ways to remove pesticides from Food
Most pesticides are complex organic molecules and these tend not to be very heat stable. But reliably breaking down all pesticide molecules would likely require prolonged exposure to temperatures well over 100ºC, so you can’t rely on ordinary cooking to remove all traces.
No washing method is 100% effective for removing all pesticide residues. The specialist explained that unlike dishes, fruit and vegetables have pores.
Many pesticides, especially organophosphate insecticides (e.g. malathion, diazinon, chlorpyriphos), can be neutralized with household bleach. Remember that bleach can be hazardous, and it is also a pesticide.
Dish soap or bleach can get trapped or absorbed by the pores and become difficult to rinse off the fruit once they have been applied.
In a study published in Food Control, vegetables were soaked in vinegar for 20 minutes and also in a salt and water solution to remove chlorpyrifos, DDT, cypermethrin and chlorothalonil pesticides. Both methods worked well. The vinegar effectively removed pesticides, but left a residue that affected taste.
Consumer Reports’ experts recommend rinsing, rubbing, or scrubbing fruits and vegetables at home to help remove pesticide residue. Now, a new study from researchers at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, suggests another method that may also be effective: soaking them in a solution of baking soda and water.
Without the presence of pesticides, fields would be greener in every sense of the word. The soil would be healthier, erode less easily and the surrounding environment would be safer for wildlife and plants trying to thrive.
Pesticides have every change to get into our bodies through the food we eat. Methods to reduce intake of pesticides: We should take organic food and buy organic food as far as possible.
Organic foods are crops that were produced without using synthetic pesticides, fertilizers or other genetically modified components. They also include animals products such as cheese, milk, meat or honey that were also produced free of growth hormones, antibiotics.
The major states involved in organic agriculture in India are Gujarat, Kerala, Karnataka, Uttarakhand, Sikkim, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, and Himachal Pradesh.
40 per cent of the country’s total organic farming is being done in Uttarakhand. Eighty percent of farmers in Uttarakhand practice organic farming by default in rain fed conditions. Major crops grown in the state are rice, wheat, sugarcane, maize, soybean, pulses, oilseeds and a number of fruits and vegetables.
Organic foods are clearly healthier for the planet, because they support an agricultural system that avoids synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and promotes a more biodiverse ecosystem, with attention to the health of waterways, soil, air, wildlife, farm workers, and the climate.
Subhash Staff answered 3 years ago
India is now both the largest manufacturer as well as consumer of pesticides in South Asia. There are over 131 different types of pesticides marketed under 203 different formulations by over 350 companies in the country.
Despite the proliferation of pesticides, DDT and BHC still account for 50,000 tonnes or two-thirds of the total consumption in the country. That’s because these are 10 times cheaper than most other pesticides, easy to handle and attack a wide range of pests. However, they cause multiple problems. Once sprayed they do not degrade easily and can persist in the environment for as long as 20 years. The soil then becomes a reservoir for these pesticides steadily transferring them to edible crops, polluting the groundwater, trees and wildlife.
It’s hard to stomach, but true. It’s not just drinking water that you have to worry about. But practically everything you eat. The chappatis and rice, dais and vegetables, meats and fruits and even milk, now pose a new threat not just to us but to our babies too. Repeated surveys have shown that Indians are daily eating food laced with some of the highest amounts of toxic pesticide residues found in the world. In the process, they are exposed to the risk of heart disease, brain, kidney and liver damage and even cancer.
Women having still births have shown high serum levels of DDT and BHC.
Studies indicate that right from the day our babies begin to suckle they are taking in pesticides deposited in breast milk. And some ready-made baby foods too are similarly contaminated.
For the mass of Indians, however, the threat from imbibing small doses of pesticides in their daily bread is more difficult to quantify. The problem is that these pesticides poison the body slowly. Most of them are made by rearranging atoms of various elements like carbon, hydrogen and chlorine into toxic molecules. These usually attack the nervous systems of the pests, first paralysing and then killing them.
When humans swallow chemicals like DDT and BHC they are absorbed by the small intestine. These then adhere to the fatty tissues-the storehouses of energy that are distributed throughout the body and account for 10 per cent of its weight. The toxins usually pile up in the fatty tissues of such vital organs as the thyroid, heart, kidney, liver, the mammary glands and the testes. They can be transferred from the umbilical cord blood to the growing foetus. And through breast feeding to babies. Over the years, the body can store about 50 to 100 milligrams of a wide variety of these toxins.
DDT and BHC, widely used in India, have been banned in at least 16 countries.
It may take years for the buildup to act. Few doctors in general hospitals will link blurring of vision or a heart attack to signs of pesticide poisoning.
Repeated surveys have shown that wheat, rice and maize, the daily diet of most Indians, are highly contaminated with pesticides like DDT and BHC. While levels in rice tend to be lower because of dehusking, in wheat, these pesticides don’t degrade even when the flour is made into chappatis. The various dais also contain toxic residues, but the levels are not as high.
Grapes are probably one of the most widely-sprayed fruits. Studies have shown that they containa high residue level of several pesticides. In apples, the threat comes from the chemical daminozide, used as a growth regulator, and now suspected to be cancer-causing. Citrus fruit too contains toxic residues.
Experts feel that the real threat comes from milk and its products like butter, ghee and cheese. Since pesticides adhere to fatty tissues in the body, milk, which has a high content of fat, is an ideal storehouse for toxins. In bovine milk, contamination comes through the cattle fodder which has a high level of toxins. When milk is processed into butter residue levels get magnified.
Non-vegetarian food too is highly contaminated. Goats swallow pesticides when they graze near fields being sprayed with them. Hens do the same through the feed they eat, which is usually the husk of grain. And the residues seep into eggs as well. Fish too contain high amounts of DDT residues. In West Bengal, people illegally spray endosulfan on water to stun fish and catch them.
In the West, after damaging studies on BHC and DDT led to the countries banning them, farmers switched to costlier but safer pesticides. In India, since pesticides account for 50 per cent of input costs in many crops, farmers are unlikely to use the expensive ones. And that could lead to a steep fall in foodgrain production.
raman Staff answered 3 years ago
The first known pesticide was elemental sulfur dusting used in ancient Sumer about 4,500 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia. The Rigveda, which is about 4,000 years old, mentions the use of poisonous plants for pest control.
Pesticides are been used in India since 1948 and their production started in 1952 with the help of a manufacturing plant near Kolkata. In the era of the 1960s use of pesticides in India increased enormously.
Insecticides, fungicides and herbicides are used in India, with insecticides forming the highest share. India is among the largest producers of pesticides in the world.
The most common pesticide used in India is BHC. It represent about 50% of total volume of pesticides used in India.
The draft notification, titled ‘Banning of Insecticides Order 2020’, prohibits the import, manufacture, sale, transport, distribution and use of 27 pesticides, including Acephate, Atrazine, Benfuracarb, Butachlor, Captan, Carbofuran, Chlorpyriphos, 2,4-D, Deltamethrin and others.
Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana are the states that accounted for 70 per cent of total pesticide consumption. The use-intensity has been found highest in Jammu and Kashmir, followed by Punjab and Haryana.
Pesticides have been implicated in human studies of leukemia, lymphoma and cancers of the brain, breasts, prostate, testes and ovaries. Reproductive harm from pesticides includes birth defects, still birth, spontaneous abortion, sterility and infertility.
Pesticides can have various effects on human health, depending on factors such as the type of pesticide, the level of exposure, and individual susceptibility.
Some potential health effects of pesticides on humans include:
Acute Poisoning: Short-term exposure to high levels of pesticides can result in acute poisoning, causing symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, dizziness, headaches, and respiratory distress. In severe cases, acute pesticide poisoning can be life-threatening.
Chronic Health Effects: Long-term exposure to low levels of pesticides, either through repeated exposure or environmental contamination, can lead to chronic health problems. These may include neurological disorders, reproductive issues, endocrine disruption, immune system dysfunction, and certain types of cancer.
Developmental Effects: Prenatal exposure to pesticides has been linked to developmental abnormalities in children, including low birth weight, birth defects, cognitive impairments, and behavioral disorders. Children are particularly vulnerable to the effects of pesticides due to their developing bodies and higher levels of exposure per unit of body weight.
Respiratory Problems: Inhalation of pesticide fumes, dust, or spray droplets can irritate the respiratory system and exacerbate pre-existing respiratory conditions such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
Skin and Eye Irritation: Direct contact with pesticides can cause skin irritation, allergic reactions, and chemical burns. Exposure to pesticide spray or vapor can also irritate the eyes, leading to redness, itching, and inflammation.
Environmental Impact: Pesticides can contaminate soil, water, and air, leading to adverse effects on ecosystems and wildlife. Pesticide runoff from agricultural fields can pollute surface water and groundwater, affecting aquatic organisms and disrupting ecological balance.
To minimize the health risks associated with pesticides, it is essential to use them responsibly and follow safety guidelines for handling, storage, and disposal. This includes wearing protective clothing and equipment, using pesticides only as directed, avoiding unnecessary exposure, and choosing less toxic alternatives whenever possible. Additionally, regulatory agencies play a crucial role in establishing and enforcing safety standards for pesticide use to protect public health and the environment.