"Pesticides make the life of earthworms miserable"

March 2014

"Pesticides make the life of earthworms miserable"

Link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140325113232.htm

     Although pesticides are sprayed on crops to help them grow, the effect they have on earthworms living in the soil under the plants is devastating. New research shows that because worms have developed methods to detoxify themselves so that they can live in soil sprayed with fungicide, they only grow to half their normal weight and they do not reproduce as well as worms in fields that are not sprayed, according to a Danish/French research team that studied earthworms that were exposed to pesticides over generations.

The researchers set up an experiment to study the behavior of the earthworm species Aporectodea caliginosa. They moved two portions of farmed soil with worms into the lab. One portion was taken from a local organic field, the other from a local conventionally cultivated field that had been sprayed with fungicide for 20 years. This soil had leftovers of the internationally commonly used fungicide Opus at a level common in fields. When crops are sprayed with fungicide, only a small part of the chemical is absorbed by the plant. The waste can be up to 70 per cent, and much of the fungicide ends up in the soil. Over generations the worms have developed a method to detoxify themselves.