Environmental and Human Health Issues
As with pesticide application in general, crop dusting is associated with a number of environmental concerns, including spray drift, soil contamination, water pollution, and occupational disease, often in the form of increased risk of cancer to those involved. In addition to their impact on human health, there is also concern that the use of pesticides can lead to the development of resistance among insects. By 1970 in the United States, lawsuits and court cases involving spraying of pesticides, especially aerial application in commercial agriculture were a growing area in law, combining areas such as negligence, products liability, strict liability, statutory regulation and commercial law. Environmental and human rights issues associated with crop dusting are greatest in developing countries, where government oversight is weaker or absent, few safety practices are used, and chemicals are used that are banned in most developed countries.
A study found that most of the crops grown in Texas were treated with chemicals that show evidence of possible carcinogenicity, and pointed to aerial application of pesticides as a potential cause of cancer in children. Crop dusting involving arsenic powders has been implicated in Bowen's disease. A study found that aviation mechanics in Nicaragua who work on planes used in the aerial application of pesticides are at high risk for poisoning due to contamination on parts of the aircraft. Also in Nicaragua, water runoff from a crop-dusting airport has been linked to contamination of the supply of drinking water, leading to levels of toxaphene far exceeding the limit the United States Environmental Protection Agency set in the U.S.
Read more about this topic: Aerial Application
Famous quotes containing the words human, health and/or issues:
“In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood. Then there can never be an explanation.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Even though I had let them choose their own socks since babyhood, I was only beginning to learn to trust their adult judgment.. . . I had a sensation very much like the moment in an airplane when you realize that even if you stop holding the plane up by gripping the arms of your seat until your knuckles show white, the plane will stay up by itself. . . . To detach myself from my children . . . I had to achieve a condition which might be called loving objectivity.”
—Anonymous Parent of Adult Children. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, ch. 5 (1978)
“Cynicism formulates issues clearly, but only to dismiss them.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)