Farmers often battle insects to assure their crop yields. Have you ever thought of the toxic mixture of these various insecticides along with mosquito sprays winding their way into our waterways?
4ZZZ's Eliot Rifkin chatted about the Insecticide concoctions draining into the Great Barrier Reef with UQ’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences researcher Associate Professor Michael Warne.
Here's a link to the Reef 2050 Water Quality Improvement Plan - and you can check out the Reef Report Card - as well as the specific pesticide portion of the most recent Reef Report Card here
There’s an interesting article on pesticides in Great Barrier Reef and how they are currently managed at Australian levels here
We've also included an abstract of Michael Warne’s research “Analysis of pesticide mixtures discharged to the lagoon of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia” which is published in the journal “Environmental Pollution” as well as Michael Warne's bio here as well as info on UQ’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences.
HAVE YOUR SAY... the APVMA is currently conducting two reviews. If listeners are interested they could make submissions to these:
- The big review - "Review of agvet chemicals regulatory framework"
- The second review (much less formal) is for the proposed method the APVMA will use in assessing pesticide risk during transport from agricultural land and its exerting effects on aquatic ecosystems. Appendix B Attachment 2—2020 higher tier runoff methodology (update)