Pesticide: Use and Misuseby Prayash Pathak (Chalise) | 23-09-2017 20:48 |
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Pesticides are a boon to the modern society. With the evolution of humans, their natural competitors are also evovling. Pest and insect have evolved to a whole new range in such a way that if no control is done in their activity, then they will be a threat to our ecosystem. If the pesticide against late blight of potato was not developed then till now the whole world would have been destroyed by the Irish potato famine. The control of Ceylon coffee rust and Bengal famine was possible only by the use of pesticide. Pesticides are being one of the important part of our agricultural input. No farmer will ever be able to commercialize his farm without the use of pesticide. But this boon is now being a sin for us and the sole cause of this is humans. The invention of pesticide was done to act as a poison for pest but the irregularities in its use has made it a poison to humans. Each and every pesticide contains a lebal that clearly specifies the concentration that has to be applied. Any pesticide that is used in accordance with its specified concentration has minimum or no effect to us. But the lack of this basic awareness among us has led to the use of pesticide in such a high concentration that we are directly eating poison in form of food. The most well known example of this is the discovery and misuse of DDT. After DDT was discovered in mid eighteen century, the use of DDT became so widespresd that it was even used for lice control in human hair. But we became careless and forgot that every pesticide has a limit ans ssln DDT started to bio magbify and enter our ecosyatem and due to this DDT was banned. Nowadays excess use of pesticide is affecting our health. Humans are suffering from a wide range of diseases mainly due to the pesticide that is consumed with the food. A year ago the largest vegetable market of Nepal ?Kalimati Vegetable Market? was closed temporarily by the government due to the presence of excessive amount of pesticide in the vegetables that were being sold to the people. Excessive pesticide use also affects the environment. It has already been proved that excess pesticide use causes every form of pollution. The direct exposure of pesticide is responsible for land and air pollution. Such applied pesticide when swept by rain water pollutes water sources. Now we need to seek alternative to this careless pesticide use. The best one will be use of pesticide in prescribed concentration. Other can be use of organic pesticides like Jhol mal or application of IPM(Integrated Pest Management). IPM uses chemical pesticide as last resort and solves the pest problem by using other method like biological method, physical method and climatic control. |