Are pesticides really that good?

Question

1) can they cause leukemia?

2)how do they travel from one yard to the next?

3)Do pesticides only affect the pests they are meant to kill? how so or how not? and is it true that since pesticides tend to break up quiker, that they are safer now?

please give me scientific reasoning!!!..thank you..

Answer 1

in answering your question i should point out that pesticides is a general terms for insecticides, herbicides, fungicides and many others.

1) in the early days many pesticides were untested and freely available, so they may have caused various cancers like leukemia. now days pesticides are regiously tested before being sold and some require a licence to use.  only the safest are freely available (i say safe but keep in mind they are still poision just genrally not too dangerious to humans).

2) pesticides travel though various means the most common are drift by wind, run off from surface water, and ground water contamination.

3) your question various greatly on the type of pesticide and what your trying to kill so i will answer in genral terms.

pesticides work by disrupting a chemical, metabolic or photosynthetic pathway at different points so it makes pesticides more effective against some species. for instance blocking the production of , say, glucose. this may quickly kill wevills and kill 98% but kill only 50% of grubs. generally pesticides kill many things and are not species specific.

4) when pesticides first entered the market in wide scale release some, like DDT, were bioaccumulents and didn't break down. in most developed countries the use of bio-accumulates has been banned and only pesticides with a rapid half-life are allowed to be sold (with some exceptions).

in conclusion yes pesticides are now a lot safer now.