This volume covers the developments in pesticide usage, with particular emphasis on the regulations that safeguard users, consumers and the environment. It provides a comprehensive guide to the use of pesticides and the efforts of manufacturers to develop pesticides that are both effective and environmentally benign. The difficulties and hazards associated with their applications, their environmental effects, particularly in wate and the control of storage, uses and residue levels in non-agricultural habitat and in foodstuffs are also discussed.

Many of the pesticides applied to food crops in this country are present in foods and may pose risks to human health. Current regulations are intended to protect the health of the general population by controlling pesticide use. This book explores whether the present regulatory approaches adequately protect infants and children, who may differ from adults in susceptibility and in dietary exposures to pesticide residues. The committee focuses on four major areas: Susceptibility: Are children more susceptible or less susceptible than adults to the effects of dietary exposure to pesticides? Exposure: What foods do infants and children eat, and which pesticides and how much of them are present in those foods? Is the current information on consumption and residues adequate to estimate exposure? Toxicity: Are toxicity tests in laboratory animals adequate to predict toxicity in human infants and children? Do the extent and type of toxicity of some chemicals vary by species and by age? Assessing risk: How is dietary exposure to pesticide residues associated with response? How can laboratory data on lifetime exposures of animals be used to derive meaningful estimates of risk to children? Does risk accumulate more rapidly during the early years of life? This book will be of interest to policymakers, administrators of research in the public and private sectors, toxicologists, pediatricians and other health professionals, and the pesticide industry.

In the last forty years, agriculture in the industrialised countries has undergone a revolution. That has dramatically increased yields, but it has also led to extensive rural depopulation; widespread degradation of the environment; contamination of food with agrochemicals and bacteria; more routine maltreatment of farm animals; and the undermining of Third World economies and livelihoods through unfair trading systems. Confronted by mounting evidence of environmental harm and social impacts, mainstream agronomistis and policy-makers have debatedly recognized the need for change. 'Sustainable agricultutre' has become the buzz phrase. But that can mean different things to different people. We have to ask: sustainable agriculture for whom? Whose interests are benefiting? And whose are suffering? At issue is the question of power – of who controls the land and what it produces. Most of the changes currently under discussion will actually strengthen the status quo and the underlying causes of the damage. The result will be greater intensification of farming, environmental destruction and inequality. There are no simple off-the-shelf alternatives to industrial agriculture. There are, however, groups throughout the world, who have contributed to this report and who are working together on a new approach. An agriculture that, in Wendell Berry's words, 'depletes neither soil nor people'. Originally published in 1992