Pesticide Analysis

A pesticide is a substance or mixture of substances used to prevent, control or reduce harmful organisms. A pesticide can be a chemical agent, a biological agent such as a virus or bacteria, an antimicrobial, a disinfectant or any other tool. Harmful organisms can be insects, plant pathogens, weeds, mollusks, birds, mammals, fish, worms and microbes that damage human food resources, property, disease-spreading insects. Although there are some benefits to using pesticides, it can also create some problems due to their potential toxicity to humans and other animals.

What Are the Negative Effects of Pesticides on Animals and Humans?

A pesticide can be a chemical agent or a biological agent such as a virus or bacteria. Since most chemical pesticides do not show selective activity for the target organism, they can cause various diseases and even be fatal in organisms other than the target organism. Many pesticides are also harmful to humans. As a result of the use of the living things they are used in by humans in the form of food, they cause common diseases and unwanted distress in humans. Chemical pesticides and their active ingredients have acute toxic effects. Many pesticides, including carbamates, organophosphates and chlorinated hydrocarbons, have a genetoxic effect. In studies conducted on people engaged in agriculture and exposed to pesticides, structural and numerical chromosome anomalies and increase in sister chromatid exchange were observed in these individuals.

Agricultural workers exposed to chronic effects of pesticides have seen liver, kidney and muscle disorders as well as many genetic damage. The effect of pesticide on living things starts from fetal life. These drugs pass from the placenta to the fetus and as a result, miscarriages, hyperpigmented and hyperkeratatic childbirths are seen. In animal experiments, it was observed that the pesticide labeled as radioactive and given to the mother passed from the placenta to the fetus after 5 hours and settled in the eye, nervous system and liver of the fetus.

Organophosphate and carbamate insecticides threaten living life by showing their effects directly on the peripheral and central nervous system.

Many pesticides harm people, animals and the environment. The first studies on this were demonstrated in the early 70’s, during the process of preparing the UNEP Stockholm Human Environment Convention. Thirty years later, the US, Australia, Canada, Japan and New Zealand bowed to international pressure and decided to draft a global agreement.

Within the scope of these studies, many chemical products, which are called POPs (Persistent Organic Pollutants), which are also widely used in agriculture, have been banned, except for some special cases, and the production of new chemicals with POPs characteristics is prohibited. Under this agreement; Aldrin, endrin, toxafen, chlordan, dieldrin, heptacol, myrex, DDT and industrial chemicals hexachlorobenzene and PCBs were banned and their stocks were monitored. Too et al in Turkey. These chemicals were found in a certain proportion of breast milk in many studies conducted by. Organic chlorinated pesticides, which are persistent organic pollutants, are described by Cafer Turgut et al. and remote transport was detected in the Taurus Mountains.

Pesticides also have negative effects on blood cells. Organophosphorus insecticides prevent the erythrocyte function by changing the membrane properties of erythrocytes (red blood cells). Some other pesticides cause the deformation of the size and surface shapes of erythrocytes and change the activities of the erythrocyte antioxidant system enzymes. One of the most important effects of pesticides is that they inhibit the acetylcholinesterase enzyme. In this case, it goes to live death with the suppression of respiratory control centers in the lower brain stem. Again, in a study conducted in pesticides, it was found that pesticides cause inhibition of TCA enzymes (malate dehydrogenase, succinate dehydrogenase).