The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines a pesticide as “any substance or mixture of substances intended for preventing, destroying, repelling, or mitigating any pest.”

A pesticide may be a chemical substance or biological agent (such as a virus or bacteria) used against pests including insects, plant pathogens, weeds, mollusks, birds, mammals, fish, nematodes, and microbes.  These organisms may compete with humans for food, invade lawns and gardens, destroy wood in houses, spread disease, or just be a general nuisance in our everyday lives.  Pesticides are usually, but not always, poisonous to humans.

There are 5 major types of pesticides you will encounter: insecticides (insect killers), herbidicides (weed killers), fungicides (fungus killers), nematocides (roundworm killers), and rodenticides (rat and mouse killers).  Be aware that although the 5 are listed here, there are many others (e.g. algicides, miticides).

Your school Librarian, Dr. Hatcher, recommends the following information resources that will be helpful.

Library Databases (VRC):

• Health Reference Center: Contains full-text nursing and allied health journal articles, and reliable health information. Search in multiple languages by subject, keyword or by specific publication title.
• eLibrary Science: Science content, tools, video, links to manipulative, interactive activities, science news, famous scientists, science history, clickable periodic table, hundreds of educator-approved websites.
• Science Online: A comprehensive overview of all sciences includes biology, chemistry, computer, earth, environmental, forensic, and marine sciences, mathematics, physics, space, astronomy, weather and climate. Timelines, videos, animations, diagrams, experiments, essays, definitions, biographies, conversion calculators, scientific dictionary, and links content to state and national standards including Common Core.

Search Engines:  

• Google Scholar: "provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Google Scholar helps you find relevant work across the world of scholarly research." (Google Scholar)

Print Collection: 

• eBook and print resources available by searching the WMHS library catalog in Destiny

Examples to search: Pesticides, herbicides, etc.