Title: Environmental impact of pesticides - Wikipedia
Headings: Environmental impact of pesticides
Environmental impact of pesticides
Contents
Agriculture and the environment
History
Specific pesticide effects
Pesticide environmental effects
Air
Water
United States regulations
United Kingdom regulations
European Union regulations
Soil
Effect on plants
Effect on animals
Birds
Aquatic life
Amphibians
Humans
Persistent organic pollutants
Pest resistance
Pest rebound and secondary pest outbreaks
Prevalence
Eliminating pesticides
See also
References
External links

Content: The common practice of incident registration is inadequate for understanding the entirety of effects. Since 1990, research interest has shifted from documenting incidents and quantifying chemical exposure to studies aimed at linking laboratory, mesocosm and field experiments. The proportion of effect-related publications has increased. Animal studies mostly focus on fish, insects, birds, amphibians and arachnids. Since 1993, the United States and the European Union have updated pesticide risk assessments, ending the use of acutely toxic organophosphate and carbamate insecticides. Newer pesticides aim at efficiency in target and minimum side effects in nontarget organisms. The phylogenetic proximity of beneficial and pest species complicates the project. One of the major challenges is to link the results from cellular studies through many levels of increasing complexity to ecosystems. The concept (borrowed from nuclear physics) of a half-life has been utilized for pesticides in plants, and certain authors maintain that pesticide risk and impact assessment models rely on and are sensitive to information describing dissipation from plants. Half-life for pesticides is explained in two NPIC fact sheets.