Pesticides pollution: Classifications, human health impact, extraction and treatment techniques

The word “pesticides” is a complex word that encompasses all compounds that are applied to destroy or regulate pests; this includes insecticides (insects), herbicides (weeds) and fungicides (fungi). One of the primary sponsors of the green revolution was finding ways to improve and use safe pesticides to control the wide range of herbal and insect pests, which affect negatively the quantity and quality of world food production. This review provides an analysis of pesticides' definition, classifications, toxicity, factors affecting toxicity, pesticides in water resources, their environmental fate, impacts on human health and their methods of detection, disposal and treatment. Moreover, this work gives a brief description of the extraction methods used for pesticides analysis besides comparing the analytical techniques used to measure the very low concentration of pesticides. Finally, this work suggests to find further alternative methods to identify the pesticide residues and other highly hazardous pollutants.