A socio-environmental perspective on pesticide use and food production

Pesticides are part of a large group of organic compounds with different physicochemical characteristics, designed to control and prevent pests in various crops and plantations, improving productivity. This works provides a perspective on pesticide use in current agriculture with the aim of identifying the influence of pesticides on food production and their impact on the environment. Therefore, it is necessary to highlight the importance of determining pesticide residues in food, aiming to ensure food safety, since these compounds can represent risks to human health and the environment. The effects of pesticides on humans range from headaches, nausea and skin and eye irritation to chronic problems such as cancer and neurological disorders, and extend to other non-target organisms such as birds, fish and bees, contaminating water, soil, and plants, as opposed to the benefits of increased production, consequently other measures for pesticide consumption need to be evaluate to ensure human health, food safety and environmental protection. It is important to note that chromatographic techniques and mass spectrometry assist in the determination of pesticide residues and evaluate the quality of the food that reaches the consumer, and together with the Maximum Residue Limits (MRLs), established by the legislation of each country, these instrumentation act to control the exposure of population to pesticides. Although the MRL is used as a parameter for food quality, the global differences in pesticide legislation do not guarantee the consumer safety. In this sense, a brief analysis of MRL inefficiency is also present in this paper.