Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
pest-control chemicals have also the potential or measurable adverse effects on nontarget
vertebrate domestic animals and wildlife (Kendall and Smith 2003; Poppenga 2007; Rattner
2009; Poppenga and Oehme 2010). By design, manufacture, and use, pesticides are biologi-
cally active and, in most cases, toxic substances. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries,
the fate of pesticide residues in the environment has become a critical issue in both devel-
oped and developing countries.
Although human health continues to be the main concern for the regulators, as a part
of environmental risk assessment, it is important to balance economic and health benefits
to the general public against acceptability of the adverse effects on nontarget fauna when
pesticides are used (Burger 1997). Some of these negative aspects are drastic and easily
assessable by means of sign observation, necropsy findings, and/or analytical chemistry
results, but others are less obvious and more difficult to ascertain due to interspecific varia-
tions in susceptibility among animals, especially in the wild and when long-term effects or
multiple exposures are considered (Hoffman et al. 1990; Blus and Henny 1997; Kendall and
Smith 2003; Walker 2003; Plumlee 2004; Brakes and Smith 2005; Mineau 2005; Berny 2007;
Poppenga 2007; Smith et al. 2007; Martínez-Haro et al. 2008; Aktar et al. 2009; Sonne 2010).
Vertebrate wildlife exists in a much less well controlled environment than companion
animals, livestock, and poultry and is therefore exposed to a greater variety of different
pesticides through contaminated air, water, soil, or food (Newton 1998; Smith et al. 2007).
Even when no adverse health effects can be verified or confirmed with the current pre-
mortem and postmortem techniques and methodologies available, the measurement of
contaminant levels in wildlife can be used as an index of the environmental quality of the
ecosystems (Peakall 1992).
Pets can play the same role in domestic environments (O'Brien et al. 1993; Backer et al.
2001; Kunisue et al. 2005; Schmidt 2009). Moreover, monitoring the pesticide levels in the
samples of animal foods, including meat, milk, and eggs, which historically preceded
those of the residues in wildlife, started when concerns arose about the safety of human
foods and is, nowadays, routinely carried out in many countries (Keith 1996; Fontcuberta
et al. 2008; Glynn et al. 2009; Lutze et al. 2009).
Given the breadth of the topic, this chapter is not an exhaustive treatise, but will hope-
fully provide an updated overview and the state of the art of major avian and mammalian
pesticide residue exposure data. This review is focused (but is not restricted) to a selection
of information published in the last 10 years, from 2000 up to the end of 2010, at least for
the most typically monitored pesticide pollutants.
Table 14.1
gives the common names, the
Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) registry numbers, and the oral acute toxicities (LD
50
,
μg/g BW) of some selected pesticides in birds (usually, mallard ducks, quails, or chickens)
and mammals (rat), which will be discussed in depth next.
14.1.1 Addressing the Terminology
Definitions of terms and concepts differ among authors and need to be addressed for the
purpose of this review, in order to proceed further. First of all, the negative effects of
pesticides in individuals or populations of birds and mammals can be classified basically
into two main groups: direct and indirect (Boatman et al. 2004; Berny 2007). Direct effects
require exposure to the pesticides and are complex processes that have some different
variants and types, not necessarily exclusive among them. We have, for example, lethal
and sublethal, accidental and intentional, primary and secondary, and short- (acute) and
long-term (chronic) exposures, which will be discussed next with some examples. This
group of direct effects is, by far, the most studied one.
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