Despite billions of dollars spent regulating pesticides, overall they pose no less risk today than 25 years ago, according to a two-year study conducted be Consumers Union, the independent product-testing organization that publishes Consumer Reports.

"We're on a 'pesticide treadmill,'" says the study's lead researcher, Charles M. Benbrook, a former executive director of the National Academy of Sciences' Board on Agriculture. "While pesticide use has risen since the early 1970s, crop losses to pests have not declined. Not only don't chemical methods of pest control work as well as they should, they pose substantial ecological and economic risks. What's needed ot get off this treadmill is a quicker shift to safer, ecologically sounder, and more cost-effective IPM methods."

The study is part of a 288-page softcover book called Pest Management at the Crossroads, which describes safer and more effective ways to control pests using an innovative array of preventative tactics and biological controls. This multi level approach to pest control is know as integrated pest management (IPM), although a more evocative description -"many little hammers"- has been coined by ecologists. The book offers recommendations for a nationwide transition to biointensive IPM by the year 2020. Under this approach, based on an understanding of pest ecology, use of reduced-risk pesticides is a last resort.

Many universities, botanical gardens and small farms have switched to IPM or organic gardening practices in the last couple of decades, but large-scale agricultural and horticultural enterprises and home gardeners have been slower to make the change. According to the study, Americans spent $10.4 billion on pesticides in 1995, about three-quarters of which was spent on agricultural uses. The study further reports that over the last 10 years the number of weed species known to be resistant to herbicides has risen from 48 to 270 and the number of plant diseases resistant to fungicides has gone up by 50 percent.

For more information on Pest Management at the Crossroads or to order a copy postpaid for $35.95, call (301) 617-7815 or write to Professional Mailing and Distribution Services, Inc., P.O. Box 2013, Annapolis Junction, MD 20701.