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Wetland Plants
Published in Pankaj Chowdhary, Abhay Raj, Contaminants and Clean Technologies, 2020
Due to the growing need for food for fast growing human populations, the application of agricultural chemicals continues to be an integral part of modern agriculture. The basic idea or thought of farmers for using chemical fertilizers, urea-di-ammonium phosphate (urea-DAP), pesticides, and herbicides is achieving better performance and more productivity. With the excessive use of inorganic fertilizers, these chemicals reach to the ground water channels. Continuous leaching and precipitation of these agrochemicals in the water bodies has led to contamination and pollution of natural resources – water bodies. Some chemical fertilizers contain substances such as heavy metals, inorganic acids, and organic pollutants – components that are toxic to living organisms. Nitrates from agriculture are now the most common chemical contaminants in the world’s underground aquifers. Aquatic ecosystems are affected by agricultural pollution.
Linking water and food security and nutrition (FSN)
Published in Lyla Mehta, Theib Oweis, Claudia Ringler, Barbara Schreiner, Shiney Varghese, Water for Food Security, Nutrition and Social Justice, 2019
Lyla Mehta, Theib Oweis, Claudia Ringler, Barbara Schreiner, Shiney Varghese
Agricultural water pollution is the largest nonpoint source pollution and as such much harder to control than point sources of pollution, such as those from cities or industries. Controlling nonpoint source pollution generally requires a different approach from that of addressing point source pollution, as it requires cooperation from a large number of actors spread over a watershed. The key sources of agricultural pollution are fertilizer use on crop land and livestock animal excreta. Excessive nitrogen (N) and phosphorous (P) in water bodies results in eutrophication, which can harm aquatic life by depleting oxygen. The presence of nitrogen-based compounds in drinking water can also be directly harmful to human health. Xie and Ringler (2017) estimate rapid increases in agricultural water pollution, particularly in the group of developing countries where monitoring and enforcement of water quality standards remains weak. Even less well understood and addressed are the impacts of water pollution from pesticides on ecosystems and human health. Moreover, both livestock and aquaculture production, when done on an industrial scale, are associated with significant wastewater discharge along their value chains with potential adverse impacts on human and animal health and the environment (Delgado et al., 1999).
Contaminants of emerging concern
Published in Alistair Rieu-Clarke, Andrew Allan, Sarah Hendry, Routledge Handbook of Water Law and Policy, 2017
Agricultural pollution is a large topic, including the management of fertilizers, pesticides and veterinary pharmaceuticals, as well as management of soil (to address erosion, salinity, carbon management). Forestry, and other rural land uses, may also deposit fertilizers or impact on soil quality or carbon deposits, but in terms of ‘emerging’ concerns, pesticides and pharmaceuticals are most relevant. Similarly, each of these may also be used in urban and domestic contexts, but at scale, agricultural use is more relevant here. It has been estimated that more than 5,000 tonnes of antibiotics and 5 tonnes of hormones are employed in the European meat production (Balderacchi et al.2014); Schriks et al. (2010) estimate that 140 million tonnes of fertilizer and ‘several million’ tonnes of pesticides are applied to land each year. Large pig and poultry production in the EU is covered by the Industrial Emissions Directive which should entail the proper management of all wastes from these activities, but smaller-scale production or extensively reared livestock may impact directly on watercourses, potentially causing pollution by nutrients and pathogens as well as metabolized pharmaceuticals.
The United Nations World Water Development Report 2022 on groundwater, a synthesis
Published in LHB, 2022
It is estimated that agricultural pollution has overtaken contamination from settlements and industries as the major factor in the degradation of inland and coastal waters. The principal pollutants from agriculture are nutrients, pesticides, salts, sediments, organic carbon, pathogens, metals and drug residues. Nitrate, from chemical and organic fertilisers, is the most prevalent anthropogenic contaminant in groundwater globally, notably leading to eutrophication of surface waters. In the European Union, 38% of water bodies are under significant pressure from agricultural pollution; in the USA, agriculture is the principal source of pollution of rivers; and in China, agriculture is responsible for a large proportion of surface and groundwater pollution by nitrogen (54).
Tree uptake of excess nutrients and herbicides in a maize-olive tree cultivation system
Published in Journal of Environmental Science and Health, Part A, 2018
George Pavlidis, Vassilios A. Tsihrintzis, Helen Karasali, Dimitrios Alexakis
Agricultural pollution is a serious concern for environmental managers, with nitrates and phosphates originating from inorganic fertilisers to be the most common and hazardous constituents reaching the surface and groundwater, presenting risks to ecosystems and human health. The rising trend of chemical pesticide use has also been addressed in the EU legislation over the last 25 years, and several mitigation techniques have been proposed for the reduction of the pollutants entering the aquatic systems.
Environmental regulation and agricultural green productivity growth in China: A retest based on ‘Porter Hypothesis’
Published in Environmental Technology, 2023
③For agricultural undesirable output, this paper selects agricultural non-point source chemical oxygen demand, total nitrogen, ammonia nitrogen, total phosphorus emissions as the undesirable output indexes. This is because agricultural pollution is mainly reflected in water pollution, such as chemical oxygen demand, total nitrogen, ammonia nitrogen and total phosphorus. Specifically, referring to the accounting method of pollution production and sewage discharge of agricultural source from the second National Pollution Source Survey in 2017, unit survey and evaluation method is used to calculate the emissions of chemical oxygen demand, total nitrogen, ammonia nitrogen and total phosphorus in three main agricultural production activities, namely agricultural sowing, livestock and poultry breeding and aquaculture in this paper [27]. The various sources of pollution are decomposed into units(objects) in this paper, and Table 3 reports the matching between the units(objects) and the chemical oxygen demand, total nitrogen, ammonia nitrogen and total phosphorus emissions. On this basis, the quantitative relationship between the units (objects) and pollution emissions was constructed. The advantage of this method is that agricultural pollution emissions calculated by unit survey and evaluation method not only ensure the comprehensiveness, typicality and representativeness of the survey unit, but also fully consider the availability and comparability of the survey statistical data. Concretely, the calculation formula of total nitrogen, ammonia nitrogen and total phosphorus emissions produced by nitrogen-containing fertilizer and phosphorus-containing fertilizer in the process of agricultural sowing is as follows: where represents the emission of pollutant in the agricultural sowing process of the province(municipality) in the year of (unit: ton), represents the sown area of crops in the province(municipality) in the year of (unit:hectare), represents the loss coefficient of pollutant in the province(municipality) (unit: kg/hectare), and represents the application amount of chemical fertilizers containing pollutant in the province(municipality) in the year of (unit: kg/hectare), denotes the amount of fertilizer containing pollutant applied by the province(municipality) in 2017 (unit: kg/hectare).