Pesticides

10 Pages 2422 Words

What are pesticides? Pesticides are toxins, which are used by produce growers universally to control pests and insects that can destroy crops. Many times once these products are sold, these toxins are being ingested by humans in the forms of fruits and vegetables that have remaining toxins on them. There are many important issues in the world regarding the environment and it's affects on the average person. Yet pesticides are still found daily in foods all around the world. How safe are these toxins to humans and what is being done to safeguard the environment as well as the health of individuals? Does the average person consume harmful amounts of poison at every meal? If the levels are unsafe, why is this problem continuing to get a blind eye from the people who are supposed to protect society? These questions when asked only lead to more questions. Until things are done to change the systems of pesticide usage universally, society can never be sure as to the long term effects on our environment and what they are eating or giving to the future of our world, the children.
In some foreign countries pesticides are used more frequently with legislative control than in the United States. In Central America and South America, for example, many of the pesticides that the United States and European countries have banned, wind up being used on a majority of their produce crops. One of these pesticides is DDT, which was the most common form of pesticide in the 1970’s and 1980’s, but has now been banned. The largest problem with this is that Europe and the United States import from South America for produce all of the time. Mexico and South America are the leading suppliers of produce for the earth's population. One reason is because their climate is steady enough to produce crops all year long. Unfortunately, those countries are also known for their large amount of insects of all varieties. Over 10 million species of different inse...