fenvs-09-643847 April 26, 2021 Time: 10:30 # 1
REVIEW
published: 04 May 2021
doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2021.643847
Edited by:
Christophe Darnault,
Clemson University, United States
Reviewed by:
Roberta Fulthorpe,
University of Toronto Scarborough,
Canada
Alan Kolok,
University of Idaho, United States
Kean Goh,
California Department of Pesticide
Regulation, United States
*Correspondence:
Nathan Donley
Specialty section:
This article was submitted to
Soil Processes,
a section of the journal
Frontiers in Environmental Science
Received: 18 December 2020
Accepted: 07 April 2021
Published: 04 May 2021
Citation:
Gunstone T, Cornelisse T, Klein K,
Dubey A and Donley N (2021)
Pesticides and Soil Invertebrates:
A Hazard Assessment.
Front. Environ. Sci. 9:643847.
doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2021.643847
Pesticides and Soil Invertebrates:
A Hazard Assessment
Tari Gunstone
1
, Tara Cornelisse
1
, Kendra Klein
2
, Aditi Dubey
3
and Nathan Donley
1
*
1
Center for Biological Diversity, Portland, OR, United States,
2
Friends of the Earth US, Berkeley, CA, United States,
3
Department of Entomology, University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, MD, United States
Agricultural pesticide use and its associated environmental harms is widespread
throughout much of the world. Efforts to mitigate this harm have largely been focused
on reducing pesticide contamination of the water and air, as runoff and pesticide drift are
the most significant sources of offsite pesticide movement. Yet pesticide contamination
of the soil can also result in environmental harm. Pesticides are often applied directly
to soil as drenches and granules and increasingly in the form of seed coatings, making
it important to understand how pesticides impact soil ecosystems. Soils contain an
abundance of biologically diverse organisms that perform many important functions
such as nutrient cycling, soil structure maintenance, carbon transformation, and the
regulation of pests and diseases. Many terrestrial invertebrates have declined in recent
decades. Habitat loss and agrichemical pollution due to agricultural intensification
have been identified as major driving factors. Here, we review nearly 400 studies
on the effects of pesticides on non-target invertebrates that have egg, larval, or
immature development in the soil. This review encompasses 275 unique species, taxa or
combined taxa of soil organisms and 284 different pesticide active ingredients or unique
mixtures of active ingredients. We identified and extracted relevant data in relation
to the following endpoints: mortality, abundance, biomass, behavior, reproduction,
biochemical biomarkers, growth, richness and diversity, and structural changes. This
resulted in an analysis of over 2,800 separate “tested parameters,” measured as a
change in a specific endpoint following exposure of a specific organism to a specific
pesticide. We found that 70.5% of tested parameters showed negative effects, whereas
1.4% and 28.1% of tested parameters showed positive or no significant effects from
pesticide exposure, respectively. In addition, we discuss general effect trends among
pesticide classes, taxa, and endpoints, as well as data gaps. Our review indicates that
pesticides of all types pose a clear hazard to soil invertebrates. Negative effects are
evident in both lab and field studies, across all studied pesticide classes, and in a wide
variety of soil organisms and endpoints. The prevalence of negative effects in our results
underscores the need for soil organisms to be represented in any risk analysis of a
pesticide that has the potential to contaminate soil, and for any significant risk to be
mitigated in a way that will specifically reduce harm to soil organisms and to the many
important ecosystem services they provide.
Keywords: pesticide, soil, regulation, EPA, invertebrate, terrestrial
Frontiers in Environmental Science | www.frontiersin.org 1 May 2021 | Volume 9 | Article 643847