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Harming the Soil Health
Researchers at the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth and the University of Maryland ask EPA to raise norms on the utilization of pesticides and germicides to safeguard the biodiversity in the soil.
Soil has more living organisms than people on earth.And These organisms are invertebrates, nematodes, bacteria are filtering water, recycling nutrients in the soil and also helping in regulating the planet’s temperature.
But these toxic insecticides, fungicides are destroying these microhabitats,which are drastically affecting soil health, even with these chemicals are made from approved pesticide ingredients
- Based on the study, the researchers looked at nearly 400 published studies that conducted on 2,800 experiments which showing how pesticides affect soil organisms.
- This study focused on 275 different species of soil organisms and also 284 different kinds of pesticides.
- They also found that In the 70 percent of experiments Pesticides were actually harming organisms which were very important for keeping the soil health in optimum level.
The rise in pesticide-intensive agriculture and pollution are two of the key contributors to bringing down several soil organisms like ground-nesting bees and beetles. The researchers highlight that they’re after all a number of the foremost crucial drivers of soil biodiversity loss within the previous decade.
The EPA, which is responsible for pesticide openly acknowledges that ranges between 50 percent to 100% of all pesticides on the soil.
Yet to assess pesticides’ harms to soil species, the agency still uses one test species—one that spends its entire life above ground in artificial boxes to estimate the danger to all or any soil organisms—the European honeybee.”
Researchers ask EPA to require aggressive steps to save lots of the biodiverse ecosystems within the soil, warning that the long-term environmental cost of this negligence can't be ignored which protecting it is very important than anything.