Pesticides are substances that are meant to control pests. This includes herbicide, insecticide, nematicide, molluscicide, piscicide, avicide, rodenticide, bactericide, insect repellent, animal repellent, microbicide, fungicide, and lampricide. The most common of these are herbicides, which account for approximately 50% of all pesticide use globally. Most pesticides are intended to serve as plant protection products, which in general, protect plants from weeds, fungi, or insects. In general, a pesticide is a chemical or biological agent that deters, incapacitates, kills, or otherwise discourages pests. Target pests can include insects, plant pathogens, weeds, molluscs, birds, mammals, fish, nematodes (roundworms), and microbes that destroy property, cause nuisance, or spread disease, or are disease vectors. Along with these benefits, pesticides also have drawbacks, such as potential toxicity to humans and other species.
Insecticides are pesticides used to kill insects. They include ovicides and larvicides used against insect eggs and larvae, respectively. Insecticides are used in agriculture, medicine, industry and by consumers. Insecticides are claimed to be a major factor behind the increase in the 20th-century's agricultural productivity. Nearly all insecticides can significantly alter ecosystems; many are toxic to humans and/or animals; some become concentrated as they spread along the food chain.
Piperonyl butoxide (PBO) is a pale yellow to light brown liquid organic compound used as a synergist component of pesticide formulations. That is, despite having no pesticidal activity of its own, it enhances the potency of certain pesticides such as carbamates, pyrethrins, pyrethroids, and rotenone. It is a semisynthetic derivative of safrole.
Carbofuran is a carbamate pesticide, widely used around the world to control insects on a wide variety of field crops, including potatoes, corn and soybeans. It is a systemic insecticide, which means that the plant absorbs it through the roots, and from there the plant distributes it throughout its organs where insecticidal concentrations are attained. Carbofuran also has contact activity against pests. It is one of the most toxic pesticides still in use.
Carbaryl is a chemical in the carbamate family used chiefly as an insecticide. It is a white crystalline solid previously sold under the brand name Sevin, which was a trademark of the Bayer Company. The Sevin trademark has since been acquired by GardenTech, which has eliminated carbaryl from most Sevin formulations. Union Carbide discovered carbaryl and introduced it commercially in 1958. Bayer purchased Aventis CropScience in 2002, a company that included Union Carbide pesticide operations. Carbaryl was the third-most-used insecticide in the United States for home gardens, commercial agriculture, and forestry and rangeland protection. As a veterinary drug, it is known as carbaril (INN).
Malathion is an organophosphate insecticide which acts as an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor. In the USSR, it was known as carbophos, in New Zealand and Australia as maldison and in South Africa as mercaptothion.
Bed bugs are parasitic insects from the genus Cimex, who are micropredators that feed on blood, usually at night. Their bites can result in a number of health impacts including skin rashes, psychological effects, and allergic symptoms. Bed bug bites may lead to skin changes ranging from small areas of redness to prominent blisters. Symptoms may take between minutes to days to appear and itchiness is generally present. Some individuals may feel tired or have a fever. Typically, uncovered areas of the body are affected. Their bites are not known to transmit any infectious disease. Complications may rarely include areas of dead skin or vasculitis.
Diazinon, a colorless to dark brown liquid, is a thiophosphoric acid ester developed in 1952 by Ciba-Geigy, a Swiss chemical company. It is a nonsystemic organophosphate insecticide formerly used to control cockroaches, silverfish, ants, and fleas in residential, non-food buildings. Diazinon was heavily used during the 1970s and early 1980s for general-purpose gardening use and indoor pest control. A bait form was used to control scavenger wasps in the western U.S. Diazinon is used in flea collars for domestic pets in Australia and New Zealand. Residential uses of diazinon were outlawed in the U.S. in 2004 because of human health risks but it is still approved for agricultural uses. An emergency antidote is atropine.
Aldicarb is a carbamate insecticide which is the active substance in the pesticide Temik. It is effective against thrips, aphids, spider mites, lygus, fleahoppers, and leafminers, but is primarily used as a nematicide. Aldicarb is a cholinesterase inhibitor which prevents the breakdown of acetylcholine in the synapse. Aldicarb is considered "extremely hazardous" by the EPA and World Health Organization and has been banned in more than 100 countries. In case of severe poisoning, the victim dies of respiratory failure.
Fipronil is a broad-spectrum insecticide that belongs to the phenylpyrazole chemical family. Fipronil disrupts the insect central nervous system by blocking the ligand-gated ion channel of the GABAA receptor and glutamate-gated chloride (GluCl) channels. This causes hyperexcitation of contaminated insects' nerves and muscles. Fipronil's specificity towards insects is believed to be due to its greater binding affinity for the GABAA receptors of insects than to those of mammals, and for its action on GluCl channels, which do not exist in mammals. As of 2017, there does not appear to be significant resistance among fleas to fipronil.
A biopesticide is a biological substance or organism that damages, kills, or repels organisms seen as pests. Biological pest management intervention involves predatory, parasitic, or chemical relationships.
Fenthion is an organothiophosphate insecticide, avicide, and acaricide. Like most other organophosphates, its mode of action is via cholinesterase inhibition. Due to its relatively low toxicity towards humans and mammals, fenthion is listed as moderately toxic compound in U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and World Health Organization toxicity class.
Baygon is a pesticide brand produced by S. C. Johnson & Son. It is an insecticide used for extermination and control of household pests such as crickets, roaches, ants, carpenter ants, spiders, silverfish and mosquitoes. In 1975, Baygon introduced Australia’s first surface spray for killing cockroaches, ticks and other crawling insects.
Insecticidal soap is used to control many plant insect pests. Soap has been used for more than 200 years as an insect control. Because insecticidal soap works on direct contact with pests via the disruption of cell membranes when the insect is penetrated with fatty acids, the insect's cells leak their contents causing the insect to dehydrate and die. Insecticidal soap is sprayed on plants until the entire plant is saturated because the insecticidal properties of the soap occurs when the solution is wet. Soaps have a low mammalian toxicity and are therefore considered safe to be used around children and pets, and may be used in organic farming.
Bendiocarb is an acutely toxic carbamate insecticide used in public health and agriculture and is effective against a wide range of nuisance and disease vector insects. Many bendiocarb products are or were sold under the tradenames "Ficam" and "Turcam."
The Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA), or H.R.1627, was passed unanimously by Congress in 1996 and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on August 3, 1996. The FQPA standardized the way the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would manage the use of pesticides and amended the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act and the Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act. It mandated a health-based standard for pesticides used in foods, provided special protections for babies and infants, streamlined the approval of safe pesticides, established incentives for the creation of safer pesticides, and required that pesticide registrations remain current.
Methomyl is a carbamate insecticide introduced in 1966. It is highly toxic to humans, livestock, pets, and wildlife. The EU and UK imposed a pesticide residue limit of 20 µg/kg for apples and oranges.
Clothianidin is an insecticide developed by Takeda Chemical Industries and Bayer AG. Similar to thiamethoxam and imidacloprid, it is a neonicotinoid. Neonicotinoids are a class of insecticides that are chemically similar to nicotine, which has been used as a pesticide since the late 1700s. Clothianidin and other neonicotinoids act on the central nervous system of insects as an agonist of nAChR, the same receptor as acetylcholine, the neurotransmitter that stimulates and activating post-synaptic acetylcholine receptors but not inhibiting AChE. Clothianidin and other neonicotinoids were developed to last longer than nicotine, which is more toxic and which breaks down too quickly in the environment.
Acetamiprid is an organic compound with the chemical formula C10H11ClN4. It is an odorless neonicotinoid insecticide produced under the trade names Assail, and Chipco by Aventis CropSciences. It is systemic and intended to control sucking insects (Thysanoptera, Hemiptera, mainly aphids) on crops such as leafy vegetables, citrus fruits, pome fruits, grapes, cotton, cole crops, and ornamental plants. It is also a key pesticide in commercial cherry farming due to its effectiveness against the larvae of the cherry fruit fly.
Ethiofencarb is a carbamate insecticide which is useful in controlling aphids on hard and soft fruits and some vegetables. It is not as dangerous as organophosphorous pesticides, but is considered highly toxic to humans in the UK, moderately toxic under US EPA classification, and highly toxic to aquatic life.
