The Standing Committee on Chemicals and Fertilizers presented its report on ‘Insecticides and Pesticides – Promotion and Development including Safe Usage – Licensing Regime for Insecticides’ on December 19, 2023. Pesticides are broadly of four types: insecticides, fungicides, herbicides, and bio-pesticides. Herbicides kill/control the growth of weeds, and have the …
"God's own country is only an advertisement,' declares Cherian saar, a retired teacher in Champakulam, Alappuzha district, Kerala, as he gazes at the Pamba river flowing placidly by. All is not well with the trope of the famed Kerala wetlands, adopted by Kerala tourism as its flagship product. Kuttanad, covering …
Pesticide residue norms: Cola majors yet to clean up their act, govt drags its feet. Sunita Narain, the feisty director of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), likens her campaign against pesticide levels in India's soft drinks to "a dog with a bone that it is determined not to …
The new MRL Regulation on pesticide residues in food could be a great progress towards better protection of children and consumer in general, but there are a number of open questions how the EU and the Member States will implement this Regulation. Therefore, civil society must actively watch the development …
Laxma Jarpula, farmer, hasn’t met agriculture scientists who say India’s food security and agricultural production rely heavily on pesticides. Three years ago, he decided to risk his cotton crop with pests, rather than pesticides. “I’d put the insects in the pesticides, and they wouldn’t die. The more pesticide I used, …
I first learnt about slapp when we released a study about pesticides in colas. PepsiCo had filed a defamation case against us in the Delhi High Court and our lawyer, fresh out of law school in Bangalore, jumped as he read through the company's petition saying this was a classic …
The fruit the humble eat in India is probably made of better stuff than those eaten by the high and mighty. It seems clear, on the evidence, that exotic imported fruit could have a greater and more varied pesticide content that those grown in our backyards. The reason is that …
The bedrock of southern Punjab has high concentration of the carcinogenic elements uranium and thorium. A recent study blames the high rates of cancer in this region on this phenomenon. A report to this effect was submitted to the Punjab State Council for Science and Technology (pscst) in Chandigarh recently. …
Exposure to pesticides lowers the intelligence quotient (IQ) of children, claims a US study. Conducted by researchers from the University of North Dakota (UND) in the US, the study examined two groups of 64 children each, aged 7-12 years. One group comprised of children living on or near farms and …
a division Bench of Kerala High Court has once again directed the state government to conduct another epidemiological study in the cashew plantation areas in Kerala and trace out the factors responsible for health problems in areas such as Padre and Cheemeni in Kasaragod district. The areas were badly affected …
This paper discussed the distribution of pesticides, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and heavy metals in water, sediment and prawn from intensive prawn ponds (n = 8) near the Kolleru lake wetland, India and assessed the quality of prawn for human consumption and also discussed the possible effects of these pollutants …
Take the pesticide problem. Although cotton occupies only 5 per cent of India's agricultural land, it accounts for 54 per cent of pesticide use. Andhra Pradesh cotton growers use more than 30 per cent of the country's pesticides and almost 70 per cent of pesticides used for growing cotton. "Since …
amphibians are fast disappearing and at least one-third of the known species of frogs, toads, salamanders and caecilians, are endangered. Though climate change, pollution and disease have been usually blamed, strong evidence has emerged implicating pesticides for threatening reproduction and development in amphibians. Now, a team of scientists in the …
One of the significant areas in which pesticide residue analysis differs significantly from macro-analysis is that of contamination and interference. Trace amounts of contamination in the final samples used for the determination stage of the method can give rise to errors such as false positive or false negative results or …
This document is intended to provide an overview of the major components of surface and ground water quality and how these relate to ecosystem and human health. Local, regional, and global assessments of water quality monitoring data are used to illustrate key features of aquatic environments, and to demonstrate how …
Local Area Environment committee under the term of reference was asked to conduct an environmental audit of 247 industries located in Eloor-Edayar industrial belt and report the effect on the ecology, environment and on the health of the local population with the specific reference to the study of raw materials, …
A degraded environment brings with it a set of health problems - some new and some, which have posed a challenge over the years. Presenting Body Burden, a compilation of reports from Down to Earth on the health impacts of environment pollution in India.
an organic diet given to children provides a "dramatic and immediate protective effect' against exposures to two common organophosphorus (op) pesticides
The inspiration behind Mark Twain's fable, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County', may be facing a serious threat to its existence. A federal judge in San Francisco has asked the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to investigate if 66 pesticides commonly used in agriculture are endangering the California red-legged …
methoxychlor (mxc), a common pesticide used on food crops, may reduce fertility in women, claim researchers at the Yale School of Medicine, the us. They found mxc suppressed expression of Hoxa10
