ECOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES OF PESTICIDE APPLICATION IN THE CONTEXT OF HUMAN IMPACT

Purpose.An urgent problem is to provide the population with high quality food. Pesticides are used in order to im- prove the quality of plant raw materials and preserve landscape and biological diversity. Findings.It has been estab- lished that pesticides in food in most cases are not found as single substances, but as a combination of several ingredi- ents, which leads to a synergistic effect on human health. This causes some difficulties in normalizing the content of such combinations. Methodology. The basis for ensuring food safety is to control the pesticide content in them. For this purpose, we used the methods of modern ecological chemistry. Results. It was found that the determination of pesti- cides in the laboratory in this way is too expensive, which prompted the use of the calculation method. The calculations of time-permissible concentrations (TPC) of pesticides in food products on the basis of average indicators depending on the toxicity index LD50, as well as MPCv for organochlorine and organophosphorus pesticides, based on their chemical properties. The dependence between toxicity, selectivity of action and TPC is established, which is confirmed by the correspondence of TPC values determined experimentally and by calculation; differences in the results of studies do not exceed ± 0.07 mg per 1 kg of product. Originality.It has been proven that the obtained TPC values for different catego- ries of products are sufficient, except for some products of fish and meat and dairy origin. It is proposed to classify them as high risk due to the high content of pesticide residues and to strictly control the content of the latter. Practical value. The obtained results make it possible to significantly simplify the establishment of MDR indicators for food products based on the content of pesticide residues.