Organic chemicals can contribute to local and regional losses of freshwater biodiversity and ecosystem services. However, their overall relevance regarding larger spatial scales remains unknown. Here, we present, to our knowledge, the first risk assessment of organic chemicals on the continental scale comprising 4,000 European monitoring sites. Organic chemicals were likely to exert acute letha...

Conventional wisdom holds that Sub-Saharan African farmers use few modern inputs despite the fact that most poverty-reducing agricultural growth in the region is expected to come largely from expanded use of inputs that embody improved technologies, particularly improved seed, fertilizers and other agro-chemicals, machinery, and irrigation. Yet following several years of high food prices, conce...

The worldwide increases in both environmental damage and human population pressure have the unfortunate consequence that global food production may soon become insufficient to feed all of the world's people. It is therefore essential that agricultural productivity be significantly increased within the next few decades. To this end, agricultural practice is moving toward a more sustainable and e...

Lignocellulosic biomass, which contains cellulose (40-50%), hemicellulose (25-50%) and lignin (10-40%), is the most abundantly available raw material on Earth [1]. Broadly, it is classified into three categories: virgin biomass, waste biomass and energy crops. Owing to the rapid growth of global population and corresponding agricultural activities, the amount of lignocellulosic waste biomass is...

In agricultural soil, a suite of anthropogenic events shape the ecosystem processes and populations. However, the impact from anthropogenic sources on the soil environment is almost exclusively assessed for chemicals, although other factors like crop and tillage practices have an important impact as well. Thus, the farming system as a whole should be evaluated and ranked according to its enviro...

Background: The expansion of herbicide used in aquatic ecosystems as well as in terrestrial if is not properly controlled may produce harmful effects on freshwater fisheries. Residue limits of these agricultural chemicals in tropical fishery waters should be established. The aim of this study was to determine the acute toxicity of butachlor and pertilachlor as potential dangerous herbicides to ...

Several studies suggest that farmers may be at increased risk of prostate cancer. The present analysis, based on a large population-based case-control study conducted among men in the Montreal area in the early 1980's, aim at identifying occupational chemicals which may be responsible for such increases. The original study enrolled 449 prostate cancer cases, nearly 4,000 patients with other can...

Chemical fertilizers are used extensively in modern agriculture, in order to improve yield and productivity of agricultural products. However, nutrient leaching from agricultural soil into groundwater resources poses a major environmental and public health concern. The Evros region is one of the largest agricultural areas in Northern Greece, extending over 1.5 million acres of cultivated land. ...

There are statements I wish to protest in the Focus article "Trouble in Paradise" by John F. Lauerman published in Environmental Health Perspectives [105:914-917 (1997)]. These statements appear to have been attributed to me, but I can assure you I would never have made them. First, there is the suggestion that I included atrazine among a list of agricultural chemicals used in pineapple cultiva...

Historically, agriculture has been the mainstay of Indian economy providing bread and butter to the farming society. We often described Indian agriculture as a gamble in monsoons i.e. susceptible to weather variations and climate change. Even if we have moved quite a distance away from the situation of yesteryears, still the agricultural profession is tantamount to gambling with nature. Agricul...