The ABCs of pesticide toxicology: amounts, biology, and chemistry

Abstract

Everyone is affected directly or indirectly by pesticide use and safety. The magnitude and perception of this effect depend on one's individual involvement or vantage point. The researcher seeks discovery and the entrepreneur goes after financial rewards. The general public wants food, health and safety. Pesticide toxicology is a core issue in these relationships. The three goals of toxicology research on pesticides are first to create new knowledge and chemicals, second to evaluate their effectiveness and safety and third to regulate their use. What amounts of pesticides are applied and do we really understand their biology and chemistry? This review addresses the ABCs of pesticide toxicology, their amounts, biology and chemistry.

An evaluation for the standardization of theAllium cepatest as cytotoxicity and genotoxicity assay

“…Among the different pesticide classes, data from 2015 show that the herbicides predominate, in the amount used (55.4%) and in sales (60.4%) around the world (Casida and Bryant 2017). Environmental contamination by pesticides is a very important problem, because of the risk to non-target organisms in different ecosystems; the use of herbicides has induced a lot of damage to the environment (Mahmood et al 2014).…”

Bacillus thuringiensis Bioinsecticides Induce Developmental Defects in Non-Target Drosophila melanogaster Larvae

“…The use of conventional synthetic chemical pesticides is controversial mainly because of their harmful effects on human health and ecosystems. Public opinion along with governmental policies encourage reduction in their use [ 1 , 2 ]. An emerging solution is their replacement with biopesticides.…”

“…Among bioinsecticides, Bacillus thuringiensis ( Bt ) products are increasingly sprayed in both organic farming and conventional agriculture [ 3 ]. Bt products are the second most used insecticides in the world with 32,000 tons sold in 2017 [ 2 ]. Bt is a gram-positive spore-forming bacterium belonging to the Bacillus cereus group [ 4 ].…”

Bacillus thuringiensisbioinsecticides induce developmental defects in non-targetDrosophila melanogasterlarvae

“…The use of conventional synthetic chemical pesticides is controversial mainly because of their harmful effects on human health and ecosystems. Public opinion along with governmental policies encourage to reduce their use (Casida and Bryant, 2017;Frisvold, 2018). However, due to the world's population expansion, the use of pesticides will still be necessary to produce enough food to feed the 9.5 billion humans expected in 2050 (https://population.un.org/wpp/).…”

“…Among bioinsecticides, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) products are increasingly sprayed in both organic farming and conventional agriculture (Fiuza et al, 2017). Bt products are the second most used insecticides in the world with 32 000 tons sold in 2017 (Casida and Bryant, 2017). Bt is a Gram-positive spore-forming bacterium belonging to the Bacillus cereus group (Vilas-Boas et al, 2007).…”