Unwelcome Harvest

An account of the effects of pollution on agriculture as well as of the pollution created by agricultural advances. Assessing the situation in the UK, the USA and in developing countries, the authors show that improving food production has often brought new environmental and health problems.

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Agriculture pollutes - pesticides can destroy wildlife and some are toxic to humans; some fungicides and herbicides cause cancer. Nitrates result in the contamination of drinking water and produce the risk of the "blue-baby" syndrome in infants and of stomach cancer in adults. Agriculture produces methane, ammonia, nitrous oxide and the products of buring off, all of which add to the world's problems of acid rain, depletion of the ozone layer and global warming. This book, which focusses on the UK, the USA and Third World countries, is the first comprehensive review of agriculture and pollution, it examines the facts and assesses the relative dangers of each pollution problem. It also considers the effects of pollution on agriculture itself, crop yields are depressed and livestock damaged by various forms of pollution from all sources. The authors also offer solutions to these apparently overwhelming problems and describe existing technology which would allow us to deal with them.