Millions of barrels of pesticides travel the global marketplace, and then re-circulate as residue on food and fiber. Tackling this “circle of poison” has galvanized PAN activists around the globe since the network’s early days.
Persistent organic pollutants, or “POPs,” are chemicals that persist in the environment for years – sometimes decades.
A Consolidated List of Pesticide Bans has been developed by Dr. Meriel Watts to identify which pesticides have been banned by particular countries, because there appears to be no other comprehensive compilation of such information.
The growth of world trade in pesticides during the 1960s and 1970s led to increased concerns about the risks of using hazardous chemicals. In the early 1980s, farmers, workers and communities around the world, and especially in the Global South, began organizing to protect themselves from pesticides imports.
The U.S. system for pesticide evaluation and registration has serious weaknesses. A fundamental problem with EPA’s risk management process for pesticides is that compliance with label instructions is assumed when calculating “acceptable” risks.
The best alternative to the use of hazardous pesticides is prevention. Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is one pest management approach that focuses on the prevention and treatment of pests.
Global momentum is building to replace highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs) with agroecology — a productive, ecologically resilient, equitable, economically viable and sustainable approach to farming.
Independent scientists now largely concur that the dramatic declines in bee populations over the past decade are caused by a combination of several factors, including: increased overall pathogen loads, poor nutrition, habitat loss and pesticide exposure.
Pesticides are designed to be lethal, and many are hazardous to plants, animals and soil organisms that are not target pests.