Different methods of pest control and their environmental issues

A pesticide is any substance or mixture of substances intended for preventing, destroying, repelling, or mitigating any pest. Pests can be insects, mice and other animals, unwanted plants (weeds), fungi, or microorganisms like bacteria and viruses. Though often misunderstood to refer only to insecticides, the term pesticide also applies to herbicides, fungicides, and various other substances used to control pests. Pesticides may be organic products, such as nicotine, or synthetic chemical products, such as paraquat. Pesticides include:

Weedkillers Also known as herbicides

Fungicides Kill fungi, including mould

Nematocides Kill round, thread or eel worms

Growth regulators Stimulate or retard plant growth

Attractants Attract insects e.g. pheromones (Biochemicals used to disrupt the mating behaviour of insects)

Repellents Repel pests, including insects (such as mosqui

Farmers depend on a method called "crop rotation" to control pests. A variety of crops are planted and then rotated to different fields each year. Pests that attack one variety will die off when that variety is replaced by a different crop the following year. In many cases, removing their preferred food and shelter can control pest populations. Covering food that attracts flies, or removing garbage that attracts animal pests, is often all that is required.

Pesticides can adversely affect wildlife through changes in the food web, direct and indirect poisoning, chemical "bioconcentration", and habitat changes. And their harmful effects may show up in animals, which have no direct relationship to the original pest. In the 1960s, wildlife biologists were puzzled when the gannet population on Bonaventure Island, Quebec, began to shrink. The shells of the gannets' eggs were too thin to protect the embryos. Only after the eggs had been analysed did the scientists identify the culprit DDT, which had been bioconcentrated through higher levels of the food web. Populations of other predatory birds such as ospreys, eagles and peregrine falcons also declined when the birds accumulated DDT through their food.

Many of the birds that nest in Atlantic Canada are migratory. Some spend a large part of the year in Central and South America, where pesticide application may be more intensive and may include organochlorines, which are banned in Canada. Such birds are thus subjected to a "double whammy" exposure to toxic pesticides at both ends of their migration paths.

The hazards of chemical pesticide use are now widely recognized, although statistics are hard to gather. The World Health Organization estimates that pesticides every year and more than 200,000 die poison at least three million people. It is estimated that up to 25 million agricultural workers are poisoned every year.

Some topics in this essay:
Pesticide Programs, South America, Agent Orange, Santa Catarina, Biopesticides Biopesticides, Atlantic Provinces, North America, Pest Managementtreats, Pyrethrum Pickleworms, , pest control, conventional pesticides, integrated pest, control pests, pest management, integrated pest management, active ingredient, controls insect pests, insect pests, microbial pesticides, five main, pest populations, methods pest control, pesticide programs pesticide, office pesticide programs,