PESTICIDES - TOXIC ASPECTS Edited by Marcelo L. Larramendy and Sonia Soloneski Pesticides - Toxic Aspects http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/56979 Edited by Marcelo L. Larramendy and Sonia Soloneski Contributors Franklin Quarcoo, Nii O. Tackie, Conrad Bonsi, Mariana Butinof, Maria del Pilar Diaz, Ricardo Antonio Fernandez, Maria Josefina Lantieri, Maria Ines Stímolo, Marcelo Blanco, Ana Lia Machado, German Franchini, Marbella Gieco, Mar Portilla, Mariana Eandi, Paul Menash, Harsh Garg, Harsimran Gill, Damien A. Devault, Charles Lemarchand, Danieli Benedetti, Fernanda da Silva, Katia Kvitko, Juliana Da Silva, Simone Fernandes, Kathleen Raley-Susman Published by InTech Janeza Trdine 9, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia Copyright © 2014 InTech Individual chapters are under their authors' copyright and distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, which allows users to download, copy and build upon published chapters provided that the authors and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of the authors' work. Any republication, referencing or personal use of the individual chapters or any of their contents must explicitly identify the original source. Permission for commercial use of the book as a whole, such as (but not limited to) reprint rights, republication, distribution, sales, translation, and reproduction in any and all forms of media, must always be obtained from InTech. Notice Statements and opinions expressed in the chapters are these of the individual contributors and not necessarily those of the editors or publisher. No responsibility is accepted for the accuracy of information contained in the published chapters. The publisher assumes no responsibility for any damage or injury to persons or property arising out of the use of any materials, instructions, methods or ideas contained in the book. Publishing Process Manager Iva Lipovic Technical Editor InTech DTP team Cover InTech Design team First published February, 2014 Printed in Croatia Additional hard copies can be obtained from [email protected] Pesticides - Toxic Aspects, Edited by Marcelo L. Larramendy and Sonia Soloneski p. cm. ISBN 978-953-51-1217-4 Contents Preface VII Chapter 1 Efficiency of Pesticide Alternatives in Non-Agricultural Areas 1 Damien A. Devault and Hélène Pascaline Chapter 2 Genotoxicity Induced by Ocupational Exposure to Pesticides 29 Danieli Benedetti, Fernanda Rabaioli Da Silva, Kátia Kvitko, Simone Pereira Fernandes and Juliana da Silva Chapter 3 Flagship Species Conservation and Introduced Species Invasion : Toxic Aspects Along Loire River (France) 53 Charles Lemarchand, René Rosoux, Céline Talon and Philippe Berny Chapter 4 Pesticides, the Environment, and Human Health 81 Franklin Quarcoo, Conrad Bonsi and Nii Tackie Chapter 5 Pesticides and Agricultural Work Environments in Argentina 105 M. Butinof, R. Fernández, M.J. Lantieri, M.I. Stimolo, M. Blanco, A.L. Machado, G. Franchini, M. Gieco, M. Portilla, M. Eandi, A. Sastre and M.P. Diaz Chapter 6 Like a Canary in the Coal Mine: Behavioral Change as an Early Warning Sign of Neurotoxicological Damage 135 Kathleen M. Raley-Susman Chapter 7 Lethal and Sublethal Effects of Pesticides on Aquatic Organisms: The Case of a Freshwater Shrimp Exposure to Roundup® 163 Paul K. Mensah, Carolyn G. Palmer and Wilhelmine J. Muller VI Contents Chapter 8 Pesticides: Environmental Impacts and Management Strategies 187 Harsimran Kaur Gill and Harsh Garg Preface Today, exposure to pesticides is one of the major concerns related to the safety of the envi‐ ronment worldwide. It is estimated that approximately 1.8 billion people engage in agricul‐ tural practices, and most use pesticides to protect the food and commercial products that they produce. Most people employ pesticides occupationally for public health programs and in commercial applications, while many others use pesticides in lawn and garden applica‐ tions and for domestic protection. Although there have been attempts to decrease pesticide use through organic agricultural practices and the use of other alternative technologies to control pests, additional efforts must be made to find alternatives to chemical pesticides. At present, continued exposure to pesticides from a number of different sources, including, among others, occupational exposure, home and garden use, spray drifts, residues in house‐ hold dust, food, soil, and drinking water, remains a serious health problem in both develop‐ ing and developed countries. Risk assessment plays a crucial role in the process of decision making about the use of pesticides, both new and existing. Accumulating experience sug‐ gests that postmarket epidemiological surveillance of pesticide safety represents an essential method to ensure public health and the quality of our environment. Epidemiological studies have suggested that pesticides on the market currently may cause deleterious effects, e.g., neoplasias and other diseases in non-target species, including humans. Furthermore, many occupational and agricultural workers experience unintentional pesticide poisoning each year worldwide. In addition to causing environmental damage, wild non-target species are frequently affected by pesticide exposure because they possess physiological or biochemical similarity to the target organisms. This book, “Pesticides - Toxic Aspects,” is intended to provide an overview of toxicology that examines the hazardous effects of common chemical pesticide agents employed every day in our agricultural practices. We aimed to compress information from a diversity of sources into a single volume. The chapters include a large variety of pesticide-related topics about the effects of several methods of control on undesired weeds and pests that grow and reproduce aggressively in crops, as well as their management and several empirical method‐ ologies for study. The topics considered include details of the effects of pesticides on target and non-target organisms; the behavioral consequences of exposure to toxic chemicals, with a focus on the nervous system; the study of the action mechanisms of pesticide toxicity in individuals exposed, with emphasis on the interaction of pesticides with the DNA molecule; the lethal and sublethal effects of the herbicide glyphosate in freshwater organisms; a dis‐ cussion of pesticides as economic poisons and the balance between the economic effects of pesticide use and their adverse effects on the environment and non-target organisms; a de‐ scription of field observations and laboratory measurements of pesticide concentrations in wild species; a comparative analysis of two overwhelmingly different agricultural settings VIII Preface after pesticide exposure; and, finally, a detailed study of alternative types of pesticide use in non-agricultural areas. Many researchers have contributed to the publication of this book. The combination of ex‐ perimental and theoretical pesticide investigations of current interest will make this book of significance to researchers, scientists, engineers, and graduate students who make use of those different investigations to understand the toxic aspects of pesticides. The chief objec‐ tive of this book is hence to deliver state-of-the-art information for comprehending the toxic‐ ity of several pesticides in target and non-target organisms. We hope that this book will continue to meet the expectations and needs of all interested in the different aspects of pesti‐ cide toxicity. Marcelo L. Larramendy and Sonia Soloneski Faculty of Natural Sciences and Museum National University of La Plata Argentina Chapter 1 Efficiency of Pesticide Alternatives in Non-Agricultural Areas Damien A. Devault and Hélène Pascaline Additional information is available at the end of the chapter http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/57150 1. Introduction Global pesticide use is increasing, and such growth is recognized as stemming from agricul‐ tural needs in response to global food stress. However, pesticides are used on other areas than agricultural fields. Even if agricultural consumption of pesticides is undoubtedly the main use, the transfer from other, more impervious surfaces is regarded as a key point in understanding the fate and the global impact of pesticides, named biocides, when used for nonagricultural purposes. In the overall environment these chemicals are combined with those applied to agricultural areas, leading to confusion and thus a probable underestimation of nonagricul‐ tural pesticides. Numerous information campaigns have targeted agricultural users. The high remaining level of background contamination of rivers highlights that minoring even obliter‐ ating urban consumers precisely stultify the considered information campaigns. The ambig‐ uous situation of port contamination will also be discussed in the present chapter. However, nonagricultural uses mainly involve the same chemicals (e.g., herbicides) as agricultural uses. In the present chapter, the main biocides used will be listed, and then the differences in consumption depending on countries and legislation. The environmental traces of the main pesticides will be summarized with the confounding uses for watershed scale interpretation. The consequences of pesticide use depend on transfer rates, themselves conditioned by the type of surface where these chemicals are applied and their imperviousness. For highly artificialized urban areas, where biocides are mainly used, such information is pivotal: they explain a minor but significant part of aquatic environment contamination. Alternatives