Effects of Pesticides and Antibiotics on Humans and Animals 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently estimated that more than 1.2 billion pounds of pesticides are applied annually to crops, forests, residential areas, public lands, and aquatic areas. Also approximately 18.4 million pounds of antibiotics considered important for human use were sold for use in animal agriculture. (FDA) Antibiotic resistance is rising to dangerously high levels in all parts of the world. New resistance mechanisms are emerging and spreading globally, threatening our ability to treat common infectious diseases. “A growing list of infections such as pneumonia, tuberculosis, blood poisoning, gonorrhoea, and foodborne diseases are becoming harder, and sometimes impossible, to treat as antibiotics become less effective.

Without urgent action, we are heading for a post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries can once again kill.”(World Health Organization).

Another issue is pesticides, pesticides are poisons and, unfortunately, they can harm more than just the “pests” at which they are targeting, which cause harm to the environment. They are toxic, and exposure to pesticides can not only cause a number of health effects, but is linked to a range of serious illnesses and diseases in humans, from respiratory problems to cancer.

Pesticides and Antibiotics cause a equal threats to environment as well as to human health, therefore should limit or completely exclude the usage of both whereas pesticides on our food and antibiotics or hormones in our food.

The Hippocratic Oath is one of the oldest binding documents in history. Written in antiquity, its principles are held sacred by doctors to this day but not all doctors follow them with full honesty.

Top Writers

Professor Harris

Verified writer

4.9 (457)

Belle

Verified writer

4.7 (657)

Charlotte

Verified writer

4.7 (348)

hire verified writer

For example,“I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.”(Hippocratic Oath Modern Version). And “I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.”(Hippocratic Oath Modern Version). These sections of the oath state, sharing knowledge and accepting new ways to treat patience, but people who practiced medicine before the medical professional now did not take bribes and didn’t have to follow quotas on products. Along with following this quota or prescribing antibiotics that are not needed they are breaking the first oath stated and causing bigger problems that will cause people to die in the future from antibiotic resistance.

“The CDC recently reported that antibiotic resistant organisms contribute to over 2 million illnesses and 23,000 deaths annually in the U.S. alone.”(The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). Antibiotic resistance is becoming easier due to it being located in our waste water, surface water, ground water, sediments and soils, given to use by doctors, and is also used in our food. Antibiotics or hormones are used to make the products or animals bigger and healthier. Industries that use antibiotics are fish farming, domesticated animal industries and GMO enhanced crops. With antibiotics being used for so much we will get immune to antibiotics and create superbugs, viruses, bacterias, and to reverse this process will take control on antibiotics, lots of money, and even altering genes of organisms. Antibiotics are also having an effects on the environment which include.

In 1939, a chemist in Switzerland, Paul Muller developed a new compound that would profoundly change the lives of farmers and ordinary folks around the globe. But you can definitely say he left his mark on the world and changed the agricultural business and health of people all together. “ He first created pesticides because Paul Muller was working for the J. R. Geigy firm when he demonstrated that DDT killed the Colorado potato beetle, a pest that was ravaging the potato crops across America and Europe,”(Ganzel Group). His “DDT killed all bugs including typhus-carrying lice and malaria-carrying mosquitoes, grasshopper, cicada, lucuses that ate the crops and saved thousands of people around the World War II time period but eventually the pesticide got banned but not before it expanded to target other “pests” in the agriculture business which lead to a wide range of compounds including insecticides, fungicides, herbicides, rodenticides, molluscicides, nematicides, plant growth regulators and others,”(Ganzel Group).

Ideally a pesticide must be lethal to the targeted pests, but not to non-target species, including man. Unfortunately, this is not the case, so the controversy of use and abuse of pesticides has surfaced. The rampant use of these chemicals, under the adage, “if little is good, a lot more will be better” has played havoc with human and other life forms,(NCBI). A large and growing body of peer-reviewed, scientific studies document that pesticides are harmful to human health. In example “The herbicide atrazine, found in 94% of our water supply, has been linked to birth defects, infertility and cancer. Also women exposed to the pesticide endosulfan during pregnancy are more likely to have autistic children. And furthermore Girls exposed to DDT before puberty are five times more likely to develop breast cancer,”(PAN). Then the environmental damage caused by pesticides is also clear; from male frogs becoming females after exposure, to collapsing populations of bats and honeybees. These can be caused by runoff from fields, from the chemicals seeping into the groundwater, and just having exposure from the bottle directly.

So in reality the things that we use to boost profit, the things we use for our health, and the people we trust with our health, are not as the seems or commercialized to make you think the opposite of the reality which ends up hurt us. Throughout this paper we covered many stakeholders they range from government agencies, environmentalist, suppliers, to people or consumers like you and me. Each perspective had its pros and cons to the situation but they all came to a conclusion that we need to stop abusing antibiotics and pesticides because they are causing more harm than good. Even though they do hold specific characteristics that we need to survive and were created to promote health and stability throughout the world; the saying “abuse your power and you lose your power” goes along with this scenario because we have abused these privileges and now we are suffering. Therefore, I give the solution of regulating the usage of antibiotics and going organic in the agricultural business; these two step can stop the slow poisoning of people around the world.

Regulating antibiotics to an extent of when needed and not to give out for profit in the animal industry and not to meet a quota on a product data sheet. Also the extent of how we giving antibiotics is part of the problem because giving it for every minor cough and viral infections is which has caused the problem we have today. Also pumping animals full of hormones and antibiotics not worrying about the health effects on humans and the animals alike but only worrying about profits from what a bigger animal will bring rather than a organic or small one would. The down fall to this is people are full of greed and want profit; this would cause a drop in profits because they are getting paid by the pound and without the hormones to make them bigger they lose money. But in the end might save money as well because hormones cost them a lot of money. The other downfall is going organic in the agricultural business will mean the loss profit because of the chemical repellant being absent. But there are ways around it in ideas like nets, green houses, and maybe in the future we can find a natural bug repellant; for example vanilla bean extracts repel noseeums or sand gnats from the human body.