New Australian Study Questions Pesticide Safety Levels

Anna Salleh from abc.net.au has a superlative piece on the effects of pesticides on the environment. As suspected for many years the pesticide run off from farms may be having a negative affect on the ecology of Australia’s river system. The new report says that pesticides could be damaging river biodiversity at levels that have been traditionally regarded as environmentally safe by authorities, suggests a new study.

Ecotoxciologist Dr Ben Kefford, of University of Technology, Sydney, and colleagues, report their findings online in Environmental Science & Technology.

“Pesticides are having an effect at 10 to 100 times lower concentrations than traditionally thought,”Dr Kefford said.

Kefford goes on to say that when authorities try to protect our streams and rivers from pesticides they rely on thresholds, under which it is assumed pesticides have no effect. For example, the European Union recommends the use of a commonly-used safety factor of 100.

This means if a negative effect on an aquatic organism is only seen at a particular concentration of pesticide, then a safe level of that pesticide is regarded as being one hundredth of this concentration :: Read Anna Salleh’s full article at abc.net.au»»»»