A set of tarpon fish for human consumption register the levels of contamination with pesticides highest worldwide. The viscera and muscles of the fish that inhabit the lower reaches of the Salado River, in Santa Fe, yielded record concentrations of nine insecticides, herbicides and fungicides applied to transgenic soybean, corn and cotton crops. The information comes from a study by Conicet and the Universidad Nacional del Litoral published in the journal Science of the Total Environment.
Between December 2021 and February 2022, the researchers bought the specimens from local fishermen along more than 100 kilometers of a highly productive agricultural area. The leading hypothesis is that the toxic compounds reached the fish after feeding on the river sediment. The products that most alerted scientists were glyphosatepresent in all copies, and its successor in massive agro-industrial use, the glufosinate ammonium, in half of the fish, prohibited for human consumption in most of the world.
The indices found “are extremely high and there are no records of this magnitude in the scientific literature,” assured, in communication with Telám, Raphael Lajmanovich, a load of equipment. “This was endorsed by a scientific committee of one of the world’s most detailed magazines on environmental pollution,” she clarified. One of the points of greatest risk is the possible synergy of biocides, since “the combination usually has toxic effects that are greater than the sum of the individual toxicities.”
The field responds to a viral campaign “for instilling fear” about the use of phytosanitary products
lajmanovichwho had already participated in other works on pollution by herbicidesHe has no doubts, “the origin is the agro-industrial crops that are in all the basins,” he said. As the contamination was detected in the last stretch of the river, the chances that the upper reaches are also affected are high. shad it extends to the basins of the Paraná and Paraguay rivers. Although it is a primary source of food, there are no controls on its health. A worrying fact, considering that, at least until 2017, Argentina was the third country in the world in the consumption of glyphosate, concentrated in provinces such as Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Santa Fe and Entre Ríos.
FM FM
You may also like
