On December 3, the world's population celebrates International Pesticides Day. It was launched by the Pesticide Control Network (PAN International) in 1998 to commemorate an environmental disaster that occurred on 3 December 1984 at a pesticide plant in Bhopal (India).
Today's motto: «Pesticides — dead end civilization». The purpose of Pesticide Control Day — is to draw global attention to solving the problems that have arisen as a result of the production and use of these hazardous chemicals.
Pesticides — are synthetic chemicals that many countries in the second half of the 20th century widely used to improve crop yields.
However, as it turned out later, the industrial production of these chemicals brought more harm than benefit to the world's population. Pesticides hit not only the set goal, allowing high yields to be obtained from rural fields (which, however, was later also called into question), but also water, soil, plants, animals and people, causing irreparable harm to them.
In the last decades of the 20th century, in a number of countries, pesticides have become one of the most important risk factors for human life and health and all wildlife. If in the USSR in the 1960s the amount of pesticides per capita per year did not reach one kilogram, then by the end of the 1980s this figure tripled.
It was pesticides, according to UN experts, that became the main cause of the «silent disaster» —, as the current state of soils in Europe is called. Moreover, it turned out that the resistance of pesticides is so high, and their distribution is so global, that they were found even in the bodies of penguins in Antarctica, where pesticides were introduced by air and ocean flows.
In the last decades of the 20th century, in a number of countries, pesticides have become one of the most important risk factors for human life and health... (Photo: Jan Schneckenhaus, licensed from Shutterstock.com)
The consequences of the chemical effects of pesticides on the Earth's biosphere are deplorable. They lead to various mutations and diseases in humans and animals, disruption of the reproductive and hormonal systems, immune status, cancer and birth defects. According to WHO, about 2 million pesticide poisonings are recorded worldwide every year, mostly — when working with them.
In Russia, every year Rospotrebnadzor institutions examine more than 100 thousand samples of food products and environmental objects for compliance with hygienic requirements for the content of residual quantities of pesticides.
Now, in contrast to «pesticide» agriculture, scientists are putting forward the concept of «organic» farming, based on a combination of different plant species, natural pest control, and the replacement of chemical fertilizers with organic ones. True, the question of when this concept will find large-scale practical application remains open.