Rational Use of Pesticides: Chemicals and the Environment

Abstract

Among the wide diversity of environmental issues, pesticides have experienced periodic rises and falls of attention. In the early 1960s, discussion of the issues raised in Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring, made pesticides the quintessential environmental problem. Later, however, pesticides were treated not so much as sources of hazard to the natural environment as of danger to human health. Consumers were at risk because of the presence of pesticide residues in foods. Users, including agricultural workers, could suffer potentially damaging consequences. Parallel with these kinds of public debates and linked to them, if at times only tenuously, has been a greater measure of continuity in the flow of scientific interest in the broader ecological consequences of pesticide use. As we saw in the last chapter, such questions form part of the standard criteria in determinations by regulatory bodies on the registration of particular compounds. It is not really possible in principle, or for that matter very useful, to separate out the various consequences of pesticide use and label some as falling under environmental headings. The working definition in this chapter stems in part from the perceptions and implicit classifications of types of hazard made by the various participants in pesticides debates.