Nanopesticides: A Revolutionary Tool for Agricultural Efficacy and a Potential Threat to Environmental Health

 As pivotal vectors in agricultural innovation, nanopesticides significantly enhance pesticide utilization efficiency while simultaneously raising global concern over their environmental persistence and multifaceted health hazards. This comprehensive review systematically examines nanopesticide classification systems, which encompass metal-based nanoparticles (including prevalent AgNPs, CuNPs, and TiO₂NPs), non-metallic nanoparticles, and advanced nanoformulations such as emulsions, suspensions, and dispersions designed to improve solubility and target specificity. Critical analysis extends to their environmental transport behaviors—particularly atmospheric transmission enabling transcontinental dispersion, food chain amplification mechanisms, and occupational exposure pathways—alongside multidimensional ecotoxicological impacts and human health risk mechanisms. Empirical evidence confirms that nanopesticides extensively infiltrate ecosystems and humans, inducing substantial harm to soil microbiomes through suppression of beneficial microbial activity, impairing aquatic organisms via neurotoxicity in model species like zebrafish, disrupting atmospheric insect communities exemplified by immune damage in bees, and affecting non-target species. Significantly, widely used metal nanoparticles threaten human health through distinct pathological pathways: AgNPs provoke neurotoxicity by disrupting neuronal networks and genotoxicity causing DNA strand breaks; CuNPs trigger reproductive toxicity that compromises sperm viability and motility; TiO₂NPs induce developmental toxicity leading to fetal growth restriction and placental dysfunction. To address these interconnected risks, integrated mitigation strategies are proposed across three critical tiers: 1) Optimizing source design through enzyme-responsive carriers and biodegradable frameworks, 2) Advancing environmental remediation via microbial degradation using tailored bacterial strains and photocatalytic treatment with engineered nanomaterials, and 3) Implementing evidence-based policy regulation inspired by Switzerland’s successful tax-subsidy-label model that reduced water pollution incidents by 52%. Future research priorities must unravel compounded pollution synergies, establish long-term human biomonitoring frameworks, quantify field-scale environmental fate, and develop counteractants against bioaccumulation. This work establishes a scientific foundation for harmonizing nanopesticidal efficacy with environmental and health security.