Pesticides And Hormones Essay

Research Essay: Pesticides and Hormones Today, people are using pesticides and hormones in many of the items that we use each day and it’s affecting our society in various ways. Pesticides can be used to keep roaches, ants, termites, rats, and other pest away from plants. Using pesticides can allow consumers to obtain high quality produce. They can also be used to control the spread of diseases to prevent other plants from dying. Hormones are used to increase the rate in which an animal gains weight. Using these hormones also increases the amount of meat that an animal produces. Although some people believe that pesticides and hormones should be used to help crops and livestock, they can be very harmful to others as well as the environment.

According to Unsworth, the first record of using pesticides started around 4,500 years ago by the Sumerians. The Sumerians first used sulphur compounds to control insects and other types of critters. Then in the 1940s by-products of coal, gas production or other industrial processes became new kinds of pesticides. Later on, leading into the 1950s foods became cheaper because of the new chemicals and people were not really paying attention to health risks. Also, Unsworth states, “However, problems could arise through the indiscriminate use and in 1962 these were highlighted by Rachel Carson in her book Silent Spring 13. This brought home the problems that could be associated with the indiscriminate use of pesticides and paved the way for safer and more environmentally friendly products.” More research was started after this book was written to inform people about how pesticides were harming people. In the 1970s-1980s the world’s greatest selling herbicide, glyphosate, was introduced. Glyphosate is a broad-spectrum herbicide used to kill weeds, especially annual broadleaf weeds and grasses that compete with crops. With this new popular pesticide, more problems started to occur, therefore, management strategies were needed to control it. According to the Article “Steroid Hormone Implants Used for Growth in Food-Producing Animals”, Since the 1950s, the Food

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