Environmental and Economic Costs of the Application of Pesticides Primarily in the United States

Worldwide, about 3 billion kg of pesticides are applied each year with a purchase price of nearly $40 billion per year (Pan-UK, 2003). In the United States, approximately 500 million kg of more than 600 different pesticide types are applied annually at a cost of $10 billion (Pimentel and Greiner, 1997).