Pesticides and other toxicants released into the environment can contaminate air, water, soil, and biota. This review focuses on sources, exposures, fate, analysis, and trends. The potential for exposures due to atmospheric transport and deposition of pesticides and related contaminants may pose risks to humans and wildlife.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis introductory paper provides an overview of Perspectives papers written by plenary speakers from the 13th IUPAC International Congress of Pesticide Chemistry held in San Francisco, CA, USA, in August 2014. This group of papers emphasizes some of the emerging issues and challenges at the forefront of agricultural research: sustainability; agriculture's response to climate change and population growth; pollinator health and risk assessment; and global food production and food security. In addition, as part of the Congress, a workshop on "Developing Global Leaders for Research, Regulation, and Stewardship of Crop Protection Chemistry in the 21st Century" identified specific recommendations to attract the best scientists to agricultural science, to provide opportunities to study and conduct research on crop protection chemistry topics, and to improve science communication skills.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRegul Toxicol Pharmacol
December 2015
The California Environmental Biomonitoring Program (also known as Biomonitoring California) has been generating human biomonitoring data and releasing it via their website. The current Biomonitoring California program is a collection of smaller studies, targeting specific populations (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSulfur has been widely used for centuries as a staple for pest and disease management in agriculture. Presently, it is the largest-volume pesticide in use worldwide. This review describes the sources and recovery methods for sulfur, its allotropic forms and properties and its agricultural uses, including development and potential advantages of nanosulfur as a fungicide.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPestic Biochem Physiol
May 2015
The use of biopesticides and related alternative management products is increasing. New tools, including semiochemicals and plant-incorporated protectants (PIPs), as well as botanical and microbially derived chemicals, are playing an increasing role in pest management, along with plant and animal genetics, biological control, cultural methods, and newer synthetics. The goal of this Perspective is to highlight promising new biopesticide research and development (R&D), based upon recently published work and that presented in the American Chemical Society (ACS) symposium "Biopesticides: State of the Art and Future Opportunities," as well as the authors' own perspectives.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Earth's population is expected to exceed 9 billion by 2050, posing significant challenges in meeting human needs while minimally affecting the environment. To support this population, we will need secure and safe sources of food, energy, and water. The nexus of food, energy, and water is one of the most complex, yet critical, issues that face society.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Agrochemicals Division symposium "Perfecting Communication of Chemical Risk", held at the 244th National Meeting and Exposition of the American Chemical Society in Philadelphia, PA, August 19-23, 2012, is summarized. The symposium, organized by James Seiber, Kevin Armbrust, John Johnston, Ivan Kennedy, Thomas Potter, and Keith Solomon, included discussion of better techniques for communicating risks, lessons from past experiences, and case studies, together with proposals to improve these techniques and their communication to the public as effective information. The case studies included risks of agricultural biotechnology, an organoarsenical (Roxarsone) in animal feed, petroleum spill-derived contamination of seafood, role of biomonitoring and other exposure assessment techniques, soil fumigants, implications of listing endosulfan as a persistant organic pollutant (POP), and diuron herbicide in runoff, including use of catchment basins to limit runoff to coastal ecozones and the Great Barrier Reef.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA large part of the research focus on food constituents in the 20th century was toward health-detrimental contaminants-pathogens, toxins, chemical residues, and some food additives. This is reflected in the publications in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry and other journals. This era witnessed the formation of the U.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe principles of modern pesticide residue chemistry were articulated in the 1950s. Early authors pointed out the advantages of systematizing and standardizing analytical methods for pesticides so that they could be widely practiced and the results could be reproduced from one laboratory to the next. The availability of improved methods has led to a much more complete understanding of pesticide behavior and fate in foods and the environment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe emission rates [ER (μg m⁻² s⁻¹)] for subsurface injections and surface chemigations for 15 fumigant applications were combined with the physicochemical properties of the fumigants [vapor pressure, VP (Pa); water solubility, S(w) (mg L⁻¹); soil adsorption coefficient, K(oc) (mL g⁻¹)] and with application conditions [application rate, AR (kg ha⁻¹); depth of application, d (cm)]. This resulted in the regression Ln ER = 3.598 + 0.
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