3RD INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON TECHNOLOGY - ENGINEERING & SCIENCE - Kuala Lumpur - Malaysia (2017-02-09)

Using Behaviours Of Agro-chemicals And Pesticides On Cultivable Land And Their Impacts On Human Health, Soil And Water Environment
The present study has been taken to investigate the uses and abuses of agro-chemicals and pesticides with their impacts on farmers’ health and local soil and water environment at Jhilwanja union of Cox's Bazar district in Bangladesh. Both the primary and secondary sources of data had been incorporated to fulfill the study. Primary data had been obtained through the field survey consist with questionnaire survey, FGD, expert opinion survey and in-depth interview during the dry and wet season in the year of 2015 from the study area. To conduct the questionnaire survey, stratified random sampling technique was adopted and 150 representative samples were taken from chemical fertilizer and pesticide users. Soil and water samples were also collected from eleven different sampling stations in the study area. The secondary data have been incorporated according to require for building the paper from different sources. It was observed from the study that all the farmers were used to familiar with different types of fertilizers and pesticides to increase the crop production as well as to control the effects of pests. They are frequently used to Urea, Triple Super Phosphate, Murate of Potash, Single Super Phosphate, Hyper Phosphate etc on their cultivable lands. The ‘Urea’ fertilizer was found vastly due to the deficiency of nitrogen content into the soil. Among the pesticides, Sobicron, Karate, Basudin, Diafrom, Furadin etc. are frequently used by the local farmer in the study area. They also used various types of toxic chemical fertilizers and pesticides without any training or without know the toxicity of them. They also used these types of toxic chemicals without any safety measures to protect themselves. Consequently, they suffered usually different health hazards and diseases such as; skin disease, gastrointestinal tract, dental, borne, and respiratory problems. The worst victims are found as the users particularly the farmers who are habituated to use directly those chemicals and pesticides on their agricultural fields. The water quality was observed not satisfactory and gradually going to be contaminated and soils are going to be degredaed due to mass use of agro-chemicals and pests. They are not interested to use organic manure. As a result, the organic matter content in the soils found very low (0.22-1.32%) and the two major plant micro-nutrients in the soil namely Nitrogen and Potassium are also found (0.06-1.23%) and (0.20-1.05%) respectively. This state is indicated the low fertility status of the soil in the study area. Thus the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides is deteriorating the local biotic and abiotic environment that causing harms to human health and agro-environment in the study area.
Keywords: Agro-chemicals, Health, Impacts, Pesticides, Soil and Water
Muhammad Muhibbullah, Md. Iqbal Sarwar Sarwar