A new study has confirmed that pesticides, commonly used in farmland, significantly harm bumblebees one of the most important wild pollinators. In a huge study spanning 106 sites across eight European countries, researchers have shown that despite tightened pesticide regulations, far more needs to be done
(Photo : Frank Merino)
According to the researchers, their findings refute arguments that lower pesticide consumption has a lower environmental impact. Despite arguments that genetically modified crops will eliminate the need for pesticides, the study indicates that pesticides used on GM crops have the same toxic effects as pesticides used on conventional crops.
The study is focused on the application and toxicity of 380 pesticides used in the United States between 1992 and 2016. According to scientists, many regions across the world are expected to follow the same pattern with lower volumes but greater toxic effects. Still, open-access data on pesticide usage is not available in the EU, Latin America, China, or Russia.
“Compounds that are particularly toxic to vertebrates have been replaced by compounds with less vertebrate toxicity and that is indeed a success,” said Prof Ralf Schulz, of the University Koblenz and Landau in Germany, who led the research. “But at the same time, pesticides became more specific, and therefore, unfortunately, also more toxic to ‘non-target organisms’, like pollinators and aquatic invertebrates.”
Schulz said: “GM crops were introduced using the argument that they would reduce the dependency of agriculture on chemical pesticides. This is obviously not true if you look at toxicity levels.”
The study, published in the journal Science, used US government data on pesticide use and the level of the toxicity of each chemical to give a measure of the “total applied toxicity”. This enabled changes over time to be assessed. Looking solely at the amount of pesticide applied gives a false picture, the scientists said, because some are several orders of magnit
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