By Sara Novak / Source: EcoSalon

pesticide

One of the environmental downsides of pesticides is that all that runoff has to go somewhere and much of it ends up in rivers and streams, causing water contamination.

Until now, researchers didn’t know the extent of water contamination worldwide. But new research shows that agricultural application of pesticides contaminates rivers and streams on 40 percent of the land surface, according to the Environment News Service. Specifically, stream pollution and water contamination is prevalent in the U.S., the Mediterranean, Central America, and Southeast Asia, according to researchers at University of Koblenz-Landau,University of Milan, Aarhus University, and Aachen University.

“Our analysis provides a global map of hotspots for insecticide contamination that are a major risk for biodiversity in water bodies. To our knowledge this is the first study that assesses insecticide contamination of water bodies on a global scale,” Professor Dr. Matthias Liess from the Helmholtz Center, who serves on the scientific advisory board for Germany’s National Action Plan on Sustainable Use of Plant Protection Products said to the Environment News Service.

In all, 4 million tons of agricultural pesticides are applied annually around the world and that number is on the rise as third world nations continue to adopt first world pesticide use.

“The risks of insecticide exposure to water bodies increased significantly the further South one travelled on a North-South gradient in Europe, North America and Asia, mainly driven by a higher insecticide application rate as a result of higher average temperatures,” Dr. Mira Kattwinkel, a researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology told the Environment News Service.

Read more @ EcoSalon