Emerging Contaminants in Agriculture and Ways to Reduce them Emerging Contaminants in Agriculture

Abstract

The accelerated development of modern agriculture in order to feed a growing world population is one of the main causes of contamination in soil, water, and air, causing diseases in animals and humans. Among the most common pollutants are nitrogenous fertilizers, pesticides, hydrocarbons, and nanomaterials. As more food is produced, pollution increases, making it necessary the transition to sustainable agriculture, in which organic agriculture and precision agriculture stand out as ways to reduce emerging pollutants together with bioremediation. This review paper addresses three of the most common emerging pollutants in agriculture (pesticides, nanomaterials, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons), their general description, biological effect, toxicity, norms of the maximum permissible values in Mexico, and ways to reduce them. Pesticides, nanomaterials, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are contaminants that can remain in soils damaging the ecosystem so strategies to reduce their effects include physical and chemical methods, the substitution of polluting products for organic equivalents, the use of plants and microorganisms alone or in combination as remedial agents and more recently nanotechnology and genetic engineering. The need for more food for the growing population is up today and directly related to the generation of more pollutants, deeper studies are needed to improve the effectiveness of these strategies and/or reduce their costs, in search of cleaner productions. From this review paper is possible to conclude that most of the pesticides used in the fields can affect biota, or are incorporated into the water table, the application of nanomaterials in agriculture, despite its usefulness, has also become a source of pollution because they can remain in the soil for long periods and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons have poor solubility so their removal is particularly difficult. In Mexico, even taking into account the damage caused by the pollutants described, there are currently no clear norms of the maximum permissible values for them.