The European Environment Agency (EEA) called on Wednesday to reduce the consumption of pesticides, which are still widely sold in Europe despite polluting water, soil and air, undermining biodiversity and promoting the development of diseases. “In the Europe of 27, pesticide sales have remained relatively stable, at around 350,000 tonnes per year between 2011 and 2020,” notes the agency of the European Union, based on figures from Eurostat.
In 2020, one or more pesticides were detected above thresholds of concern in 22% of river and lake monitoring sites in Europe, she points out. The neonicotinoid insecticide imidacloprid and the herbicide metolachlor recorded the highest absolute number of exceedances across Europe, primarily in northern Italy and northeastern Spain.
In groundwater, atrazine, a tenacious herbicide banned since 2007, is responsible for the greatest number of exceedances. For humans, exposure to chemical pesticides, mainly through food but also the air in regions of intensive agriculture, is linked to the development of heart, respiratory and neurological diseases, and to cancers, underlines the report.
“It is worrying to note that all the controlled pesticides (…) were detected at higher concentrations in children than in adults”, notes the EEA. In a study conducted mainly in Spain, Latvia, Hungary, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands between 2014 and 2021, at least two pesticides were present in the body of 84% of the participants.
Pesticide pollution leads to loss of biodiversity across the Old Continent. It is causing a significant decline in insect populations, threatening their essential role in food production. A German study found a 76% decline in flying insects in protected areas over a 27-year period and identified pesticides as one of the factors in this decline.
In 11 Member States, sales of pesticides fell between 2011 and 2020, with the steepest declines seen in the Czech Republic, Portugal and Denmark. Conversely, Latvia and Austria experienced the highest sales growth rates. In volume, the largest increases were recorded in Germany and France.
These two countries, together with Spain and Italy, represent the largest quantities sold for most groups of active substances and are the largest agricultural producers in the EU, a sector which argues that the use of pesticides is necessary for crop yield. According to the EEA, 83% of agricultural soils tested in a 2019 study contained pesticide residues. For the European agency, the Twenty-Seven must reduce their dependence on pesticides by adopting other models of agriculture, such as agroecology.