Pesticides and Water Pollution
Lucia Zhang ’25
Christine Wu ’25
As chemicals that aim to control pests such as insects, diseases, rodents, and weeds, pesticides harm crops when not appropriately controlled. In the US alone, around 1 billion pounds of pesticides are used annually (USGS, 2017). Not only do pesticides cause crop damage, but they also cause water pollution and health effects on wildlife and humans. Specifically, the chemicals inside the pesticides can change water’s chemical properties, threatening living organisms.
The soluble pesticides can be easily flushed away by the wind and rain as surface or groundwater, harming animals that come into contact with them. Accumulating in their bodies, the toxic pesticides can kill them and disrupt the balance of food chains. While the pesticides mostly pollute surface waters, they can also slowly filtrate through the soil into aquifers to contaminate groundwater, a source of drinking water for humans. This lowers water quality and lessens the supply of clean drinking water, which can cause various health issues to nearby communities that rely on these water sources.
Humans can also be exposed to pesticides through skin absorption, the air, and ingesting food such as fruits, vegetables, and animals (IFM, n.d.) There are a wide variety of health impacts that pesticides impose on humans, a majority of which are acute and chronic health problems. Some health effects include brain cancer, skin cancer, and disruption of the immune, reproductive, endocrine, and nervous systems (IFM, n.d.). When exposed, the pesticides bioaccumulate within the cell membrane, disrupting the metabolic system (Syafrudin et al., 2021).
To combat this, scientists have created several chemical products to fight off the impact of pesticides in both agricultural and non-agricultural regions. Some treatments utilize phase transfer of pollutants through coagulation-flocculation, adsorption, filtration, and sedimentation, which are expensive and produce secondary pollution (Syafrudin et al., 2021). However, a treatment known as advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) has recently been adopted because it targets water that contains recalcitrant and bio-refractory pollutants. AOPs are beneficial because of their thermodynamic viability and a broad spectrum of applicability. Although pesticides threaten the environment and humans, technology that combats them exists and will continue to develop.
References
IFM. Exposure to Pesticides, Herbicides, & Insecticides: Human Health Effects. (n.d.). The Institute for Functional Medicine.
https://www.ifm.org/news-insights/exposure-pesticides-herbicides-insecticides-human-health-effects/
USGS. Pesticides | U.S. Geological Survey. (n.d.). Www.usgs.gov.
https://www.usgs.gov/centers/ohio-kentucky-indiana-water-science-center/science/pesticides#overview
Syafrudin, M., Kristanti, R. A., Yuniarto, A., Hadibarata, T., Rhee, J., Al-onazi, W. A., Algarni,
T. S., Almarri, A. H., & Al-Mohaimeed, A. M. (2021). Pesticides in Drinking Water—A Review. International Journal of
Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(2).
Zakari Ajia. (2017, May 23). Pesticides and Water Pollution. The Permaculture Research
Institute; The Permaculture Research Institute. https://www.permaculturenews.org/2017/05/24/pesticides-water-pollution/
