Explain how harmful chemicals enter our bodies.

Harmful Chemicals like pesticides are sprayed on crop plants to protect them from diseases. These sprayed pesticides are absorbed by the plants because they mix up in the soil with water. From soil and water, plants absorb these pesticides. Plants are producers, they make food. Herbivores like goat consume these plants which have pesticides in them. On consuming plants accumulated with pesticides herbivores get those harmful chemicals in them. Herbivores are further eaten by carnivores like lions. Carnivores thus receive these harmful chemicals from herbivores. Humans being omnivores (both herbivores and plant eater), when eat plants or herbivores, the harmful pesticides are transferred into their bodies. This process of accumulation of harmful chemicals through each trophic level in food chain is known as biological magnification and this is how harmful chemicals reach into the bodies of humans.


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