Ok, this is the last of the pesticide articles. It is the global one, and it completes the series. It was written on the anniversary of Bhopal, december 3rd 1984.

The gas leak in the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, happened 21 years ago this month. This was the worst industrial accident in world history. Estimates vary, but anything up to 15,000 people died then, and up to 5,000 have died subsequently from the effects of the leak.

Half a million have been dehabilitated by illness caused by the leak; tests of the water supply found levels of contamination 500 times higher than the level recommended by the WHO.

Compensation has been minimal; Union Carbide gave the Indian government a lump-sum of $470 million and built a hospital. 99% of the victims got the equivalent of 400euro in compensation; many claim medical bills have eaten this up.

Union Carbide left India in 1989, and is now part of Dow Chemicals. They claim the case is done and dusted. They make profits of $32.6 billion a year, while babies with extreme deformities are still being born in Bhopal.

The problems with pesticides outlined over the last 2 weeks pale into insignificance when compared to the problem of pesticide poisoning in the third world. Whatever about residues in consumers and drift affecting rural communities and the environment, farm labourers in the third world who use pesticides are in an altogether different category of risk.

Looking at the figures gives us a clue both to the extent of the problem and to the difficulties in coming to grips with the problem. There is no agreement on the figures for how many people die from pesticide poisonings each year. Even the World Health Organization uses both the 20,000 and 200,000 deaths per year figures in separate reports.

Sometimes they cover themselves by giving wide, general figures; for example, they claim that there are between 1 and 5 million acute poisonings and 25 million non-acute poisonings each year.

The wide differences in the above figures are partly explained by the fact that mild poisonings can often go unreported, partly because symptoms can be similar to other health problems.

Also, pesticides can accumulate in land and water and cause negative effects in people (and in the food supply, the environment etc) over a period of years, without the connection being made to pesticides. There is also sometimes a long lag between the cause (exposure) and effect (disease), which can make it impossible to make a definite connection.

This is compounded by the fact that many poor farm labourers in the third world have no medical care, no desire to annoy their employers and some are undocumented, so reporting illness is pointless, job-threatening or dangerous. Then add lack of medical training, lack of state resources, the extra vulnerability of the already sick, the malnourished and the young.

Taking all of the above into account, it is reasonable to agree with the experts when they say that the true figures, for both chronic and acute poisonings, and indeed for deaths are far higher than any of the estimates.

Spraying pesticides in the third world can be a dirty and dangerous job. Problems in this area are made worse by illiteracy, poor labeling which is sometimes in a language the user doesn�t understand, and weak sales regulations.

The range of effects of acute pesticide poisonings read like an a-z of what could go wrong with your body. They can be broken into categories; neurobehaviourial, intestinal, respiratory, and finally skin and mucus complications.

Long term effects can include developmental and reproductive problems (e.g. increased still births, birth deformities etc), endocrine disruption (hormones behaving badly, lower sperm count etc) cancer (in adults and children) and, as already highlighted under acute poisonings, neurological (behavioural problems, lower intelligence) and immunological (a weak immune system in humans, especially children, obviously makes it harder for them to fight diseases).

It can sometimes seem daunting, looking at global issues and trying to find solutions to them.

However it is clear that if you are going to eat food imported from the poorer countries of the world, you should really make an effort to eat organic food. Only 1% of the pesticides allowed under the conventional regulations are allowed under organic regulations.

Don't worry, they won't all be about pesticides. In fact, I have been criticised for being too positive by other organic journalists! However, I've decided to 'finish it off' as it were. So I'm posting part 2 of the pesticide story here, and part 3 next. Then, let the positivity flow!

In many cases (and here with these pesticide articles) the originals were published in the Irish Examiner - various slight modifications may have been made before publication in the farming supplement.

Also, if your an academic-type, you may be interested in this:
That's a link to the new edition of the International Journal of Consumer Studies, and I've an article in it.

Finally, to to update the article below, I'll let you know that according to the editor of the Farming supplement I write for, the pesticide story isn't that bad in Ireland at present. He suggests that eutrophication of Irish water, caused more by rapid development than farming (but partly caused by farming) is more of a concern. See here

pesticides part 2:

The second of my three part series on pesticides, examines the effects of pesticides on rural areas. In particular, how pesticides damage the environment and harm people close to sprayed fields will be highlighted.

First, the good news. In Ireland, we have amongst the lowest usage of pesticides in Europe. However there is, according to the Heritage Council, �a strong spatial variation in the levels of pesticide usage in Ireland reflecting the uneven distribution of land use types�. So some areas are obviously more affected than others.

From 1965 to the present, the amount of pesticides used in Ireland has increased from 500 tonnes to well over 2000. This has led to the extinction of some plants and the corollary reduction in numbers of many different types of butterflies and moths, which are dependent on certain types of plant.

In the US, University of Pittsburgh assistant professor of biology Rick Relyea has stepped beyond the usual lab tests of one pesticide on one species. He has tested for direct and indirect effects of various pesticides in �realistic concentrations� on a number of plants and animals.

According to Relyea, "the most shocking insight coming out of this was that Roundup, something designed to kill plants, was extremely lethal to amphibians.�

Organic agriculture, on the other hand has been shown in numerous studies, to increase plant and bird biodiversity. Recently, I outlined UK research which found that birds, bats, spiders and wild plants were found in greater numbers on organic farms. This follows on from a whole range of research which makes similar claims; some endangered plants were only found on German organic farms in 1996, for example.

Some research has shown that maintaining, and not spraying hedgerows is particularly important for biodiversity. This would suggest that REPS farms are havens of biodiversity. However, according to recent research by Dr. Jane Feehan, the no-spray margins on REPS farms are too narrow. She suggested that it be increased from 1.5 metres to at least 3 metres. Research from Holland also backs up the idea of a 3 metre no-spray zone.

This �proves to be a very effective way of reducing pesticide drift to the ditch (by about 95%) and risks to aquatic organisms. �according to the Dutch research. Plant, insect and bird numbers were higher in the 3 metre unsprayed hedge zone.

It is noteworthy that a cost-benefit analysis based on the yield losses found the only crop type where the costs were too high was�sugar beet. If there�s one crop that won�t be grown in Ireland in the future, it�s sugar beet.

In the UK, the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCEP) has suggested increasing the no-spray margin on all fields to 5 metres, but for different reasons.

The RCEP are concerned about walkers and people living, working or attending schools near sprayed fields. Current research needs to be improved upon, to assess whether the genuine illnesses people who live near sprayed fields are experiencing are in fact caused by pesticides and herbicides.

From further afield, there are some very clear examples of pesticide drift causing serious damage to people. In California many thousands of people who happened to be close to sprayed fields have been poisoned, and many more cases are pending. In many cases, poor migrant farm labourers are the victims, as they live next to the sprayed fields.

In October, 2003, 130 people in Lamont, California were poisoned when a toxic pesticide drifted into a housing area. They were hit for two consecutive days; on the second day, roads were closed and people evacuated. Four months later, some victims said they still had headaches and breathing problems from the drift, while others claimed their children have since been diagnosed with asthma.

Following this and many other cases, the law was changed in California last year to implicate the sprayers directly in payments of damages to victims.

This helped pave the way for 84 residents of Avin county California, to be awarded $775,000 dollars in damages because of pesticide drift recently.

Here's a fun way to start:
Here's an article I wrote about pesticides! It's part of a three part series on pesticides I wrote for the Irish Examiner.

I'll post all 3, as there is a logical sequence to them. They go from the centre out, from the individual to the planet.

I write a weekly column for the Irish Examiner Newspaper. My column is in the farming supplement every Thursday, and is always in some way related to orgnaic farming. Occasionally, I'll post articles from there here (after they've been there first!)

Pesticides and people: part one.

There are three main areas where pesticides are a cause of concern. These are pesticide residues in food; pesticide drift (the implications for the environment and people who live near sprayed fields) and, finally, pesticide poisonings, mostly of farm labourers, and mostly, though not exclusively, in the third world. Over the next three weeks, each area will be examined in detail. Today, we�ll deal with pesticide residues in consumers.

First things first: pesticides are designed to attack the central nervous system of living creatures. Despite being different in many ways, both insects and mammals have a similar neural mechanism, so, in the �correct� dose, pesticides can obviously kill humans. For example, one teaspoon of Paraquat ingested would be fatal for a fully grown man. So there is no debate over whether pesticides are dangerous for humans or not, just over the levels.

A peer-reviewed report from the University of Washington from 2003 found that children who are a mostly organic diet had significantly lower pesticide residues in them than those who ate a mostly conventional food diet. Some pesticides were at a six times higher rate in the children who ate mostly conventional foods. This meant that the children eating organic food were in a �negligible risk� category, whereas the children eating conventional food were in an �uncertain risk� category.

The methodology used was particularly reliable. Rather than just testing mashed up apples for one pesticide at a time, (as is standard) they tested people (in this case 2-5 year old preschool children) over a period of days. Food diaries were used and the use of domestic pesticides (ie for gardening) was factored for.

The researchers decided to test for pesticide residues in children for a couple of reasons. For one thing, children eat more food as a proportion of their body weight than adults. Secondly, many of the foods children consume, and indeed are encouraged to consume as healthy, can be particularly high in pesticide residues. Examples include fresh fruit and freshly squeezed juices. (Being fresh, as opposed to processed increases the risk of residues being present)

In fact, what prompted the research in the first place was the discovery that out of 110 children previously tested, only 1 (yes 1) didn�t have measurable levels of organophosphate pesticides. That 1 child ate a diet the child�s parents described to researchers as �exclusively organic�.

We can also add the fact that children are still growing and developing, so substances which disrupt hormones or the development of the brain are of particular concern.

But are small does of pesticides dangerous? More research needs to be done, especially on the combined or cocktail effect of chemicals. It has been shown that their combined effect can be more potent, and that disrupting hormones even at minute levels can be especially risky for the foetus or for breast fed children.

Some toxicologists have expressed particular concerns. Dr. Vyvyan Howard, Senior Lecturer and Head of the Foetal and Infant Toxico-pathology Group at the University of Liverpool, states that it is impossible to test for all the combinations. However research conducted by Dr. Howard in 2001 found that when more than one pesticide is mixed together, they can be ten times more toxic than individual chemicals.

This is compounded by the fact that some pesticides are not broken down and excreted, but are instead stored in the body fat. According to Dr.Elizabeth Cullen, of the Irish Doctors� Environmental Alliance, �Exposure to chlorinated chemicals (which includes pesticides) has been linked to depressed immune systems, reduction in sperm counts, altered fertility and some adult cancers. In children they have also been associated with low birth weight, genital abnormalities and impaired neurological development�.

She goes on to claim that chemicals in body fat are not tested for in Ireland, and there is no national database of congenital malformations.

Taking all of the above into account, it is clear that the most reliable way to avoid pesticides is to eat organic food. It may all turn out to be fine, but do you really want to use yourself as a human guinea pig?