Are herbicides harmful to the human body?

Herbicides do not seem to have anything to do with the human body, so there is no need to worry about any harm to the human body. Even in some working environments, people still need to come into contact with them. Herbicides are also called weed killers, which can cause certain harm to the human body. Therefore, when using herbicides, it is best to wear isolation clothing before spraying to avoid some infections.

1. Herbicides Herbicides cause serious harm to humans and other organisms. To humans and other organisms

1) Acute poisoning. According to the World Health Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme, more than 1 million people are poisoned by herbicides every year worldwide, including 100,000 deaths. The situation is even more serious in developing countries. There are nearly one million herbicide poisoning accidents in my country every year, and more than 20,000 deaths. On September 24, 1995, CCTV reported that 540 students at a school in Binyang County, Guangxi Province, were poisoned by pesticides after eating cabbage that had been sprayed with highly toxic herbicides. The situation is even more serious in this century, with such incidents occurring every year.

2) Chronic harm. Chemical herbicides continue to accumulate in the human body. Although they will not cause obvious acute poisoning symptoms in the human body in a short period of time, they can cause chronic harm, such as: destroying the normal function of the nervous system, interfering with the balance of hormones in the human body, affecting male fertility, and immunodeficiency. The chronic harm of pesticides reduces human immunity, thus affecting human health and causing an increase in the incidence and mortality of other diseases.

3) Carcinogenic, teratogenic and mutagenic. The International Agency for Research on Cancer has confirmed based on animal experiments that widely used herbicides are clearly carcinogenic. It is estimated that the number of cancers related to chemical herbicides in the United States accounts for about 20% of the total number of cancers in the country.

2. The harm of herbicides to other organisms.

1) Direct killing. During the use of herbicides, a large number of non-target organisms will inevitably be killed, resulting in the death of natural enemies of pests and other beneficial animals. Large amounts of pesticides in the environment can also cause acute poisoning to organisms, leading to rapid death of biological populations.

2) Chronic harm. Bioaccumulation of chemical herbicides is the most serious form of indirect harm of pesticides to organisms. Herbicides in plants can be transmitted step by step through the food chain and continue to accumulate, posing a potential threat to humans and animals and affecting the ecosystem. The bioaccumulation of herbicides is particularly obvious in aquatic organisms. For example, green algae can enrich 1 ppm of DDT in the environment to 220 times, and water fleas can enrich 0.5 ppm of DDT to 100,000 times. Ming Lake in the United States uses DDT to control mosquitoes. The lake water contains 0.02 ppm of DDT, and the green algae in the lake contains 5.3 ppm of DDT, which is 265 times that in water. Finally, the content in carnivorous fish is as high as 1700 ppm, enriched to 85,000 times.