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Pesticides and Human Health

Pesticides have a specific purpose in society. Pesticides are intended to:

Because people use pesticides to kill, prevent, repel, or in some way adversely affect some living organism (the pest), pesticides by their nature are toxic to some degree. Even the least-toxic products, and those that are natural or organic, can cause health problems if someone is exposed to enough of it.

People come into contact with pesticides in many ways, including:

The risk of health problems depends not only on how toxic the ingredients are (Pesticide Ingredients), but also on the amount of exposure to the product. In addition, certain people like children, pregnant women and sick or aging populations may be more sensitive to the effects of pesticides than others.

To reduce the risk of health problems from pesticides there are several things you can do:

To learn more, choose from the following topics:


Last updated November 6, 2015

Related Topics:

What are pests?

Learn about a pest

Identify a pest

Control a pest

Integrated Pest Management

What are pesticides?





Natural and Biological Pesticides



Other types of pesticides

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