The European Environment Agency (EEA) has warned that “much more needs to be done” to reduce the use and risk of chemical and more hazardous pesticides by 2030.
The EEA has acknowledged that while “progress” has been made in reducing their use, “pesticide pollution” still poses significant risks to human health and the environment.
“Europe’s agriculture sector still relies on using high volumes of chemical pesticides to maintain crop yields, with the volume of pesticides sales having remained stable over the past decade,” the EEA warned in a new report.
According to the latest EEA report – How pesticides impact human health and ecosytems in Europe – widespread pesticide use is a major source of pollution.
“Human exposure to chemical pesticides is linked to chronic illnesses such as cancer, and heart, respiratory and neurological diseases.
“The risks pesticides pose to human health and ecosystems depend not only on the intrinsic properties of their components (e.g. active substances, co-formulants, adjuvants), but also on how they are used — including application frequency, volumes and method, and crop and soil type,” the EEA said.
The agency said various studies had identified pesticides in drinking water including a study that suggested 41% of Danish households were potentially exposed to pesticides in drinking water between 2015 and 2019, and separate research which showed that 4.5% of drinking water supplies in Ireland exceeded the standard for pesticides.
The EEA also detailed in its latest report that pesticide pollution “drives biodiversity loss in Europe” and has caused significant declines in insect populations which the agency said threatened the “critical role” they play in food production.
“A large-scale human biomonitoring study conducted between 2014 and 2021 across five European countries found that at least two pesticides were present in the bodies of 84% of survey participants.
“Pesticide levels were consistently higher in children than in adults,” the EEA report detailed.
According to the agency, climate change has altered “pest distribution” which it warned may in turn trigger increased pesticide use.
“At the same time, pesticide pollution reduces natural pest control and encourages organisms to become resistant to pesticides, leading to a vicious cycle of increased pesticide use,” the EEA warned.
According to the agency pesticides sales are not expected to be impacted by cost increases because of the war in Ukraine which it said shows that “policy measures are more crucial than prices for reducing pesticide use”.
The EEA said that pesticide sales remained “relatively stable” at around 350,000t/yr from 2011 to 2020.
But in 11 EU member states, sales also declined over this period, with the biggest falls in the Czech Republic, Portugal and Denmark.
However, Latvia and Austria saw a sharp rate of increase in pesticide sales while the largest total increases in the sales of pesticides were in Germany and France.
“These two countries, together with Spain and Italy, account for the highest volumes sold across most groups of active substances, and are also the top four agricultural producers in the EU,” the EEA report highlighted.
The agency is calling for “current risk procedures” to be improved to better understand pesticide impacts on “the ecosystem level and address scientific uncertainty”.
“Improving EU-level information on pesticide use is also essential to understanding and managing risks,” the EEA stated.