Babu, V; Dr.Muraleedharan Nair, S(Cochin University Of Science And Technology, June , 2001)
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Abstract:
The tremendous growth in industrial production and the consequent
improving in the standards of living have provoked worldwide discussion on
environmental quality. The question of abusive use of pesticides for crop protection
and vector control programmes is only one aspect of this entire complex. Inspite of
this, tendentious publications such as Rachel Carson’s Silent spring have brought
crop protection into the foreground of environmental discussions. The persistence
and high stability of organochlorine pesticides are regarded as problematic and the
accumulation of pesticides residues and its metabolites in the different
compartments of the environment is one of the major concerns. Because of their
persistence in the aquatic environment and biomagnifications in food chain, the
continuous use of pesticides will have wider implications not only in aquatic
environmental quality but also on human health. The residual levels of these
persistent chemicals exceed their permissible limits, and get partitioned among the
constituent phases of the aquatic systems. Crop protection is only part of the
agricultural economy and in agriculture itself has led to the most fundamental
changes in the human environment. So, in all areas of life one must weigh the
desired advantages against possible disadvantages.
The proposed thesis is based on the investigations on the distributions of
organochlorine and organophosphorus pesticides in the waters and sediments of
Kuttanad backwaters. Kuttanad, a unique agricultural area, which forms the
southern part of the Vembanad lake, is a deltaic formation of four river systems
entering the southern part of the Cochin estuary. No systematic study has ever been
done to assess the ecotoxicological impact of these diverse chemicals and their
metabolites in Kuttanad area. So, a detailed systematic and rigorous investigation
on the distributions of these persistent chemicals is carried out.
The thesis is divided into 7 Chapters
Description:
Department of Chemical
Oceanography, School of Marine Sciences, Cochin University of Science and
Technology