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Chemical concerns

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After findings that one or more pesticides were detected above thresholds of concern at 22 percent of all monitoring sites in rivers and lakes across Europe in 2020, the European Environment Agency (EEA) warned member states to reduce pesticide usage over concerns that sales of harmful chemicals remain strong despite its effects on human health and biodiversity.

“From 2011 to 2020, pesticide sales in the EU-27 remained relatively stable at around 350,000 tons per year,” the EEA said in a new report, citing date from Eurostat.

Pesticides are widely used in the agriculture sector, but also in forestry, along roads and railways, and in urban areas such as public parks, playgrounds, or gardens.

Human exposure to chemical pesticides, primarily through food, but also through the air in agriculture-intense regions, is linked to the development of cardiac, respiratory, and neurological disease, as well as cancer, the report said.

“Worryingly, all of the pesticides monitored … were detected in higher concentrations in children than in adults,” the EEA said.

In a study conducted in Spain, Latvia, Hungary, Czech Republic and the Netherlands between 2014 and 2021, at least two pesticides were detected in the bodies of 84 percent of survey participants.

Pesticide pollution is also driving biodiversity loss, causing significant declines in insect populations and threatening the critical role they play in food production.

This is an issue that has to be addressed as modern food production systems rely on high volumes of chemical pesticides to ensure crop yield and quantity, and maintain food security.

“We could reduce our dependency on chemical pesticides to maintain crop yields and our overall pesticide use volumes by shifting to alternative models of agriculture, such as agroecology,” the EEA said.

The concern over pesticide use and its impact should be a global one, especially in places like Negros Island where agriculture plays a major role in the economy and the lives of the people. There has to be more research and innovation into how crop yields can be sustained or improved without using the same volume of chemical pesticides that are often dangerous to more than just the pests they are supposed to target. This is a concern that our Departments of Agriculture and Science of Technology, along with planters groups, have to tackle seriously together, if all that talk of sustainability and protecting the environment is going to be taken seriously.*

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