The Environmental Impact of Using Agricultural Drugs, Duzce Province

Abstract

Pesticides are mostly synthetic chemicals used to protect agricultural products against pests, patogens and weeds in order to increase the agricultural production. Pesticides,  cause important environmental problems with respect to the chemical characteristic of their effective components by reaching water, air and soil by means of distribution, after they have been applied to soil, plants or seeds. While part of the pesticides result in environmental air pollution by evaporating, other groups of them transform into toxic substances due to photochemical disintegration in atmosphere. There are other types which are trapped in soil  after chemical or microbiological degradation and fragmentation that results in soil pollution. In addition, some part of them pollutes the rivers, lakes and underground water sources by washing away of soil surface with rain and snow after floading. Determination of DDT in the organisms  living in polar regions where pesticides had never been used before, testifies the impact of pesticide circulation in overall the world. Although the pesticide usage  in our country seems lesser than in European countries, the utilization in the regions where conventional agriculture is applied, it is in the similar lever. Among the main reasons in pesticide pollutions; insufficient and imperfect practical applications, accidental spillages inappropriate cleaning of the applicators, packing materials etc. In general, the %0.015-%6 of the total application is uptaken by the target organism, the left part of it disperse in ecosystem. Especially the organochlor and organophospate pesticides, pyrethroides and carbamates that are used frequently are the most important organic pollutants. In this study, the  propabable environmental effects of the pesticide usage in Duzce city and Turkey were investigated.