The Effects of Pesticides on Global Warming

A farmer may argue that he has to use pesticides to keep critters and diseases from feeding off of his crop. Plant diseases and herbivore insects and animals can cause him thousands in lost vegetation. However, and environmentalist may argue that the use of those pesticides leads to global warming and the destruction of the ecosystems around farming areas. Both global warming and pesticide use have been hot button issues in the world for decades. The impacts of global warming have an impact on pesticides as pesticides help to contribute to global warming.

Ozone

• Pesticides can attach themselves to dust particles and travel from away from their intended destinations to other unintended places. This increases the likely hood of these chemicals mixing with other chemicals. Some pesticides produce volatile organic compounds that pollute the atmosphere when they react with other chemicals. This reaction produces tropospheric ozone, which is ozone that is close to the earth's surface. Ozone blocks harmful ultraviolet light, but traps in heat.

Disease

• The Sierra Club warns that global warming makes the negative effects of pesticide worse. Warmer weather allows for pesticides to spread further than in cooler conditions. More water supplies are supplies are impacted. The Sierra Club has revealed that pesticides have been discovered in regions where pesticides have never been used. Some of these pesticides, such as DDT can cause cancer.

Greenhouse Gas

• The base chemicals that are used to create pesticides can be harmful to the environment even before they are combined with other chemicals to create pesticides. For example, Nitrogen oxide is a gas that blocks sunlight and traps heat. The legislature body of Roxbury declared in its laws, "Nitrogen-based fertilizers release unnatural amounts of nitrogen oxide into the atmosphere causing the greenhouse effect which results in further global warming."

Acid Rain

• Pesticides may actually be harmful to plants even though they are used to protect plants from insects. Sulfur dioxide is a base chemical in some pesticides that block out the sun when it accumulates in the atmosphere and also contribute to global warming by trapping heat. Mixed with nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide helps to create acid rains that fall down to the earth and destroy plants, trees and buildings.