Pesticides: Benefits and Hazards

Abstract

Pesticides are an integral part of modern life used to prevent growth of unwanted livingorganisms. Despite the fact that scientific statements coming from many toxicological worksprovide indication on the low risk of the pesticides and their residues, the community especiallylast years is deeply concerned about massive application of pesticides in diverse fields. Thereforeevaluation of hazard risks particularly in long term perspective is very important. In the fact thereare at least two clearly different approaches for evaluation of pesticide using: the first one isdefined as an objective or probabilistic risk assessment, while the second one is the potentialeconomic and agriculture benefits. Therefore, in this review the author has considered scientificallybased assessment of positive and negative effects of pesticide application and discusses possibleapproaches to find balance between them