Pesticide exposure has long been a cause for concern, and with good reason. Studies have shown that all persons, but especially children, pregnant women, farmers, farmworkers, and the elderly, may experience negative health effects from pesticide exposure. These effects may include acute poisoning, cancer, neurological damage, birth defects, reduced sperm count, suppressed immune systems, and reproductive and developmental harm. This book is a comprehensive examination of pesticide use, pesticide harm, and alternatives to harmful pesticides. Levine highlights the role of farming, because a substantial majority—70 percent or more annually—of pesticides are applied in agricultural uses, thereby making their way into the food chain and into the water supply. More than 20 types of pesticides have been detected in U.S. groundwater, and it is believed that nearly 100 have the potential to invade our municipal water systems. Some level of pesticide contamination has been detected in every state, in both urban and agricultural areas. Outside of agriculture, people are exposed to pesticides primarily in the home. Approximately 90 percent of all households in the nation use pesticides, and the number and concentration of these agents indoors has been shown to be greater than outdoors. Given that Americans now spend nearly 90 percent of each day indoors, this is an issue of real concern. In addition to homes, suburban and rural corporate parks are also affected. Schools are another worrisome venue. In too many of our 110,000 school districts, untrained persons are making critical decisions about the use of pesticides in school buildings and on school grounds. No other book currently examines this issue in such breadth and depth.

Exposure and Risk Assessment of Pesticide Use in Agriculture: Approaches, Tools and Advances offers an overview of the different methods available in toxicology for pesticide exposure and risk assessment, ranging from the regulatory field, to in-field research studies. The book provides technical background on each method, describing known and grounded tools, new uses of tools and development prospects. This book is ideal for researchers in pesticide toxicology, exposure toxicology, toxicologic risk assessment, occupational hygiene and medicine, and pesticide toxicology as well as occupational health and industrial hygiene practitioners, regulatory experts of corporate and public bodies, and advanced students. Covers pesticide exposure and risk assessment, ranging from fundamentals to advanced theory Explains methods that are useful for both experts and non-experts Details the use of each method for exposure and risk assessment, also including links to additional resources and further reading

An examination of political conflicts over pesticide drift and the differing conceptions of justice held by industry, regulators, and activists. The widespread but virtually invisible problem of pesticide drift—the airborne movement of agricultural pesticides into residential areas—has fueled grassroots activism from Maine to Hawaii. Pesticide drift accidents have terrified and sickened many living in the country's most marginalized and vulnerable communities. In this book, Jill Lindsey Harrison considers political conflicts over pesticide drift in California, using them to illuminate the broader problem and its potential solutions. The fact that pesticide pollution and illnesses associated with it disproportionately affect the poor and the powerless raises questions of environmental justice (and political injustice). Despite California's impressive record of environmental protection, massive pesticide regulatory apparatus, and booming organic farming industry, pesticide-related accidents and illnesses continue unabated. To unpack this conundrum, Harrison examines the conceptions of justice that increasingly shape environmental politics and finds that California's agricultural industry, regulators, and pesticide drift activists hold different, and conflicting, notions of what justice looks like. Drawing on her own extensive ethnographic research as well as in-depth interviews with regulators, activists, scientists, and public health practitioners, Harrison examines the ways industry, regulatory agencies, and different kinds of activists address pesticide drift, connecting their efforts to communitarian and libertarian conceptions of justice. The approach taken by pesticide drift activists, she finds, not only critiques theories of justice undergirding mainstream sustainable-agriculture activism, but also offers an entirely new notion of what justice means. To solve seemingly intractable environmental problems such as pesticide drift, Harrison argues, we need a different kind of environmental justice. She proposes the precautionary principle as a framework for effectively and justly addressing environmental inequities in the everyday work of environmental regulatory institutions.

Designed for the course on Farm Machinery for undergraduate students of Agricultural Engineering, the book deals with the field operations such as tillage, tillage machineries including seedbed refining machineries, sowings and planting machineries, weeding and interculture equipment. A variety of harvesting and threshing equipment for cereals and forage crop including recovery/handling of crop residue are also dealt with in detail. The book discusses machineries used for specialised crops like rice, potato and sugarcane which are the major crops grown in our country. A detailed procedure on estimation of operational cost of agricultural machineries find place in this text. Review questions, multiple choice questions and solved numerical problems are suitably placed at the end of each chapter, wherever required, to help students to check their knowledge and grasping of the subject. Efforts have been made to write this book conforming to the course curriculum to enable students to use this book as a text. The tools, implements or machineries have been described in a simple language supported with line diagrams and photographs for better understanding. The students will find this book valuable for their continuing education as well as for various competitive examinations. Besides B.Tech (Agricultural Engineering) students, the book is also beneficial for the students of Diploma in Agricultural Engineering and B.Sc. Agricultural Sciences for their paper on ‘Farm Machinery’.

The guidance provided in this publication is on enforcing compliance by on-site inspection of companies involved in pesticide production, import, distribution and retail sale. The publication is intended to be a practical, hands-on tool, with checklists that inspectors can use to prepare and conduct inspections at various sites and impose fines or penalties if deficiencies are found. It proposes a format for the report that inspectors submit to the responsible authorities after an inspection and that is filed for future reference. The guidance was prepared with the support of the FAO/WHO Joint Meeting on Pesticide Management, which advises FAO and WHO on producing guidance to promote compliance with the International Code of Conduct on Pesticide Management. The document was reviewed by experts of the Working Groups on Biocides and Pesticides of the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development, and their contributions are gratefully acknowledged.