Health and environmental impacts of pesticides: A responsibility principle and two novel systems for hazard classification and external cost determination

Abstract

Environmental policies built on the principles of 'Extended Producer Responsibility' (EPR) have spread to cover multiple categories of products and their containers or packages. Although pesticides are genuinely hazardous to human health and the environment, their negative impacts/externalities have not been targeted by these policies. In this manuscript, the author proposes an overarching 'toxi-economic' principle called the 'Extended Pesticide Producer and User Responsibility' (EPPUR) that justifiably assigns responsibility to the imposer(s) of health and environmental impacts of pesticides throughout their life cycles. The producer, sometimes the importer, should solely bear the upstream responsibility (toxicological, physical, informative, financial, legal, etc.) of the negative impacts of pesticides from the time of their production till their end-of-life. However, the downstream (post-consumption phase) responsibility should be distributed between the producer and the consumer/user. Because it is mostly related to toxicological impacts, the producer rather than the user responsibility is hard to be economically assessed. In an attempt to monetize the toxicological impacts of 'individual' pesticides on human health and the environment, the author establishes a novel 'Pesticide Negative Externality Assessment' (PNEA) system which customizes the 'undifferentiated' baseline cost to an 'individual' cost using the environmental impact quotient (EIQ). This system establishes Euro 0.303 to be the standard external cost for each EIQ unit. By knowing the EIQ value of any pesticide, one can easily calculate its external cost and use it to levy the producer for the health and environmental externality caused by any amount of this pesticide. Finally the author proposes a novel EIQ-based hazard classification and color-coding system to possibly replace or complement the WHO/FAO system which is limitedly based on the mammalian acute toxicity.

Withania somnifera acts as a potential insect growth regulator in the polyphagous pest, Pericallia ricini

“…All of these factors also pose dangers to human beings. Acute and chronic human illnesses are rapidly increasing due to polluted water, air and food as a result of biomagnification of the toxic compounds (Tunaz and Uygun 2004;Brittain et al 2010;Damalas and Eleftherohorinos 2011;Zacharia 2011;Gill and Garg 2014;Ibrahim 2016;Mahmood et al 2016). Considering the various harmful effects of chemical pesticides, appropriate alternative strategies must be developed and explored.…”

In vitro Antagonism of Strains of Trichoderma spp., on Pathogenic Fungi of Nopal Vegetable

“…and Fusarium solani 4 . The growing global concern about the damages caused by the excessive use of synthetic pesticides in human health, the environment, biodiversity and food security, has led to a general rejection of chemical control in agricultural production 5 . The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations 6 reported that in 2013 global agricultural production of 23.34 trillion tons was obtained; For which 1.29 million tons of pesticides (insecticides, herbicides, fungicides and bactericides) were applied.…”

Impacto ambiental por uso de plaguicidas en tres áreas de producción de melón en la Comarca Lagunera, México

“…La creciente preocupación mundial, por los daños que el empleo excesivo de plaguicidas sintéticos está ocasionando en la salud humana, el medio ambiente, la biodiversidad y la seguridad alimentaria, ha provocado un rechazo generalizado hacia el control químico de plagas en la producción agrícola (Sarwar, 2015;Ibrahim, 2016). Sin embargo, se estima que la restricción de la utilización de dichos agroquímicos tendría como consecuencia bajos rendimientos de los cultivos, encarecimiento y deficiencias en el suministro de alimentos para una población que va en aumento (Storck y col., 2017).…”