Banning or reducing pesticide use? Companies lobby for incentives instead of legally binding measures

Bayer products have been the focus of four posts on this site and referred to in many others.  Like other pesticide manufacturers, it is stoutly resisting attempts to ban damaging products by hiring ‘influencers’ in France and other countries.

In the United States Bayer is facing thousands of cases claiming that Roundup’s active ingredient glyphosate caused cancer and other diseases and there are calls for a ban in Britain, the latest coming from Richard Bruce. who is working with his MP. 

In December 2022 a reader living in Wales drew attention to Reuters report that Bayer, France’s crop chemical and pharmaceutical group – after a 15-year legal battle – had been ordered to pay a ‘miserly’ compensation of 11,135 euros (£9565) to a French farmer who inhaled fumes from Bayer’s weedkiller Lasso, which caused neurological problems, including memory loss, fainting and headaches.

Francois’ verdict: Farmer Paul Francois (left) said “11,000 euros for so much sacrifice, 11,135 euros for 15 years of life put between brackets, of sleepless nights, I would perhaps have done better to use this time to play the lottery”.(France-Justice).This is a strong signal from our justice system in France: ‘We don’t touch these multinationals’.”

Vakita, an activist video-on-demand platform, reports that in 2021, a manufacturer of pesticides paid an Instagrammer with 700,000 followers to defend a herbicide, which the EU was threatening to ban due to its risk to wildlife and the environment.

A full data set of the evidence on this table is available on request from DeSmog. It can also be viewed in DeSmog’s Agribusiness database, which includes profiles of all the above listed companies.

Industry has lobbied hard to ensure these targets don’t become law

The Big Ag lobby in Brussels has repeatedly suggested that the EU should not focus on legally binding cuts in agrochemical use, and sought to replace the ambitious targets already agreed by the European Parliament with weaker alternatives.

While the industry states that it is not against the principle of setting targets, it has opposed them in practice, labelling EU targets in the “SUR” pesticides-reduction plan as “non-data based”, “unrealistic”, “pointless” and “counterproductive”.

In 2021, for example, farm lobby COPA-COGECA sent MEPs numerous industry-friendly amendments to the sustainable farming strategy – and suggested the removal of commitments that would make targets legally binding.

The message – which echoes positions often used by the fossil fuel lobby – is that EU policy should optimise incentives (see Discourses of climate delay, Cambridge journal opposite). As pesticide trade body CropLife Europe says: “let’s focus on transition, not just targets”. 

Meanwhile, as CPR reports, people will continue to suffer short-term health effects, including stinging eyes, rashes, blisters, nausea, dizziness , diarrhoea. Young children (EPA, p3), farm workers and pesticide applicators who  receive greater exposures are more vulnerable.

Chronic conditions due to pesticide exposure include cancers, birth defects, reproductive harm, immunotoxicity, neurological and developmental toxicity and disruption of the endocrine systemwhich are described on several US government websites (links above).

 

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Richard Bruce stresses the need to prevent exposure to carcinogens and other toxic emissions and substances

In the FT, Deborah Arnott Chief Executive, Action on Smoking & Health and her counterparts working to reduce obesity and alcohol consumption have drawn attention to the Health Foundation’s estimate that public health interventions cost three to four times less than that of NHS interventions for each additional year of good health achieved in the population.

Responding to the recent news about an award for creating a chip which can detect cancer biomarkers in an easy and non-invasive way, Richard Bruce points out that though people who find ways to identify and treat cancers are rewarded, those who try to stop the use of cancer-causing chemicals are ignored and sometimes maligned or attacked by those with vested interests.

Electrical engineer performs high-rise electrical work

When an electrical engineer developed the most serious form of brain tumour in later life and died, his widow asked his union (now Prospect) if they recorded their members’ causes of death. They replied that they did not – and showed no interest in doing so.

Such evidence would be of value to researchers who note that moderate-to-high-dose ionizing radiation (IR) is the only established environmental risk factor for brain tumours and the evidence published in a paper delivered at the 2017 IEEE International Conference on Environment and Electrical Engineering and 2017 IEEE Industrial and Commercial Power Systems Europe (EEEIC / I&CPS Europe)

Though not included in the list of 116 carcinogens compiled by the International Agency for Research on Cancer – a body that collects and publishes cancer figures worldwide and listed in the Guardian, in 1990 research published in the British Journal of Industrial Medicine Vol. 47, No. 9 (Sep., 1990) found that brain cancer odds ratios were larger for electrical engineers and technicians. telephone workers. electric power workers and electrical workers in manufacturing industries. The excess of deaths from brain cancer was concentrated among men aged 65 or older. (Mortality from Brain Cancer and Leukaemia among Electrical Workers Dana P. Loomis and D. A. Savitz, pp. 633-638, published by the BMJ)

Earlier this week, the writer received a pre-Christmas appeal from a World Cancer Research charity. Thinking along the same lines as Richard Bruce, she then noted that it said it focussed on prevention and read on eagerly. Sadly its ‘prevention work’ appears to be limited to truisms. Its list of recommendations:

Not a word about working to prevent the use of known carcinogens. No contribution will be sent.

As the FT correspondents said: “The evidence is clear about how to achieve the greatest impact in reducing disease, disability and premature death: prevent illness in the first place. Investment in treatment is necessary but not sufficient. It needs to be accompanied by prevention and public health”.

As Richard Bruce stresses that by the time cancers are detected the damage is done. It is often too late. Remove the cause and there are no cancers and costs are reduced – but there is no profit in that and no awards to gain.

 

 

 

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Crop Life, funded by pesticide firms, lobbies against life-threatening government deregulation plans

Richard Bruce has written to Farming Today (30 Sept 2022) after hearing its report about the Government plans to revoke current pesticide legislation when it removes EU laws from the statute books. This will make our agricultural pesticide regulations even weaker that they are at present.

Former farm manager Richard, who was exposed to and poisoned by pesticides during the course of his work, writes that anyone who believes these regulations protect us is deluded; he has no confidence in the system at all – “Quite the opposite in fact”.

In March this year Corporate Europe and many other media outlets reported on a leaked document from Brussels-based pesticides lobby group CropLife Europe. Though it talks about backing the EU’s Green Deal, it is employing a wide variety of lobbying tactics to undermine ambitious, binding targets.

Corporate Europe uncovers the lobby strategies in a comprehensive report ‘A loud lobby for a silent spring: the pesticide industry’s toxic lobbying tactics against Farm to Fork’. This points out that leading members Bayer, BASF, Corteva and Syngenta are the world’s largest pesticide firms. Although competitors, they collaborate to intensify their efforts, driving and financing the lobbying activity of Crop Life.

Richard Bruce asks: “How can we trust our regulatory system?”

It is influenced by an organisation which approves the chemicals, investigates incidents causing illnesses as a result of exposure to those chemicals and is responsible for enforcing the regulations and prosecuting those who act in breach of those regulations. It has a built-in incentive to protect itself.

Public Medicine (NIH) reports that the World Health Organisation’s Mortality Database estimates about 385 million cases of pesticide poisoning occur annually world-wide including around 11,000 fatalities – and, Richard comments, that does not include cases of long-term illnesses induced by the chemicals.

He warns against believing the claims that using pesticides according to the labels renders the poisons safe – it doesn’t. For many chemicals the available PPE is not as effective as it should be, which is why the HSE recently introduced tighter regulations over the fitting of masks.

 

 

 

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Chemicals added to grain: what is the long term effect on human health?

A government website says that pesticides or ‘plant protection products’ (PPPs)  include the following:

• herbicides to control weeds before and during growth
• insecticides to protect seeds and plants from damage by insects
• nematicides and molluscicides to control attack on growing plants by worms and slugs
• rodenticides to prevent damage and contamination by small mammals such as mice and rats during growth and storage
• fungicides to prevent mould forming on plants in the field and in store

Richard Bruce – with inside knowledge gained during his time as a farm manager –  – raises the issue of those farmers and grain store operators who add pesticides and fungicides to grain, as advised by government agencies. They know only too well how difficult it is to ensure an even application.

Have matters improved since the last media report – one of many issued 2001-2014?

The media has been very reticent since the startling 2014 report headlined, ‘Over 60% of breads sold in the UK contain pesticide residues’.

Journalist Damian Carrington recorded that government data showed two in every three loaves of bread sold in the UK contain pesticide residues. Tests on hundreds of loaves also showed that 25% contained residues of more than one pesticide.

In a 2019 report we learn that DEFRA, FSA and HSE have now set up  an Expert Committee on Pesticide Residues in Food to oversees a programme that checks food and drink in the UK for traces of pesticide residues. It has no disciplinary brief: when problems are found, it takes action including additional testing to find out more information – and if necessary advises the regulatory authority so that enforcement action can be taken. The committee acts as a check that results are as expected by the regulatory regime when the law on using pesticides or on pesticide residues in food were set

Some commodities are surveyed every year, whilst others are surveyed less frequently, for example once every three years. See the latest report on the pesticide residues monitoring programme – November results.

We are still waiting for more research into the impact on health as experts recommended in the 2014 report.

A Defra spokeswoman said: “There is no human health risk from pesticide residues in bread.

But Richard points out that many of the chemicals used are both cumulative and irreversible and also trigger sensitivities and allergy. The effect on the immune system has long been known and understood – but is now denied. However the Food Standards Agency ignores this very serious problem and sees it as a problem for Defra and not a food safety issue.

Richard Bruce adds, “But of course it is a food safety issue”. He points out that If he added poison to his neighbour’s food he would be arrested.

He concludes: “Protecting the failing regulators and the chemical companies is a priority – protecting public health is not”.

 

 

 

 

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American ‘poisoned pilot’ compensated; how long will British courts deny justice to affected British aircrews?

In August Political Concern reported, following an alert from Richard Bruce, that the compensation claim made by Andrew Myers (below), subjected to toxic fumes in the cockpit, had prevailed in a hearing before law judge Darren Otto in the Oregon Workers Compensation Board Administrative court.

Later in the month Mike Wright covered the Myers case, adding that the union Unite is funding 10 cases due in the High Court next year to prove that toxic cabin fumes have affected many crew, pilots and passengers.

FOR YEARS, UK PILOTS HAVE BEEN FIGHTING FOR THE RECOGNITION OF ‘AEROTOXIC SYNDROME’

Aerotoxic is a term which describes acquired acute & chronic ill health caused by caused by toxic oil fumes leaking into planes’ ventilation systems from the engine and damaging the health of crew and passengers over time. A US doctor and scientists from France and Australia were the first to identify it (see Aerotoxic Syndrome: adverse health effects following exposure to jet oil mist during commercial flights.

in 2007 Capt. John Hoyte, a former BAe 146 Training Captain, who was exposed to toxic oil fumes while flying jet airliners and forced to retire due to ill health, founded the Aerotoxic Association. Its main aims and objectives are to support sufferers of Aerotoxic Syndrome and inform the public of the harm associated with poor aircraft cabin air quality.

CORONER: ‘ACTION SHOULD BE TAKEN’

So stated the senior coroner of Dorset, Sheriff Payne, in 2015. He issued a “Regulation 28 report” about the case to the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and British Airways (2015). In it, he stated: “In my opinion there is a risk that future deaths will occur unless action is taken. Matters of Concern are as follows…

(1) That organo-phosphate compounds are present in aircraft cabin air.

(2) That the occupants of aircraft cabins are exposed to organo-phosphate compounds with consequential damage to their health.

(3) That impairment to the health of those controlling aircraft may lead to the death of occupants.

(4) There is no real time monitoring to detect such compounds in cabin air.

(5) That no account is taken of genetic variation in the human species, such as would render individuals tolerant or intolerant of the exposure.

RECENT EVENTS

In February this year, File on Four’s Mike Powell reported  that a British Airways captain issued a Mayday emergency call to the control tower at London’s Heathrow Airport. Just minutes from landing BA633 from Athens on the evening of 2 January, his co-pilot – the first officer – had slumped at the controls. They were experiencing a “fume event”, when toxic air enters the aircraft.

The BBC has seen the Air Safety Report (ASR) of that event. In it the captain notes that he experienced strong smells and then became concerned that his co-pilot wasn’t responding to questions and had started breathing rapidly. “By this time his head was dropping forward and he was not really usefully conscious. Approximately seven miles to touchdown, I immediately donned my oxygen mask and stated that I had control. [I made] a quick assessment and decision to continue to land. P2 [Pilot 2] now fully unresponsive.” This and much more was recorded in an article on the BBC website.

BA threatens staff with disciplinary action – or even the sack – if they reveal the contents of such confidential reports, but one of them has risked it, arguing that the truth needs to be known.

 In March this year, an affected pilot, Len Lawrence (former British Aerospace PLC BAe146 Pilot), drew attention to Business Matters, a channel 4 exposé, (in section 2, 26.30 minutes in) on the consequences of putting organophosphates (OPs) in jet fuel. The programme note explained that organophosphates used as lubricants are known to cause permanent neurological damage in sufficient concentrations. Modern passenger jets pressurise the plane by taking in air from the engines, but in the case of turbulent airflow blowback may occur with fuel leeching forward and being sucked into the intake.

Len refers to his own case: “I was unaware that my former employer, British Aerospace (Civil Aircraft Division), had signed a secret out of court settlement over toxic oil fumes on the BAe146. The existence of the secret out of court settlement by British Aerospace was not disclosed to the House of Lords and the Australian Senate, when both were investigating toxic cabin fumes. I have sent a copy of the British Aerospace (Civil Aircraft Division), secret out of court settlement to the Under Secretary of State. The response was swift, should I require the direct assistance of the Under Secretary of State, I am to ask”.

FROM TWO AIRLINES, INVESTIGATORS, UNIONS, EU AGENCY AND CORONERS

• Pall Aerospace, in its search for a solution, is developing monitoring filters’
• EasyJet says it will trial the filters later this year. It is reported that attempts are also being made to develop engine oil that is less toxic.
• A veteran of the Air Accidents Investigation Branch estimates that fume events – of varying degrees of seriousness – happen at least twice a day worldwide. A study by the University of Kansas found that there were at least five a day in the United States alone.
• The Air Accidents Investigation Branch says it plans to publish a report on fume events later this year.
• The cabin crew union BASSA says fume events happen on average once a day on BA flights.
• European Union’s Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) told the BBC there were more than 100 serious fume incidents within its remit in each of 2017 and 2018.
• The senior coroner of Berkshire, Heidi Connor, in 2018, sent a “confidential letter of guidance” to all coroners in England and Wales. It was prompted by the inquest into the death of Matt Bass (a pilot whose parents paid for a second autopsy – and further tests – which found OPs in his blood). The BBC has seen that confidential letter. It says that should coroners be faced with a death involving a relatively young person who’s a frequent flier, who dies in unexplained or complex circumstances, they may wish to consider the need for further post mortem tests and the retention of samples.

The BBC asked to interview British Airways, EasyJet, Lufthansa, Ryanair, aircraft manufacturers Boeing, Airbus, Bombardier and the regulators, the CAA (UK), EASA (Europe) and the FAA (America). No-one was available.

They all argue that cabin air is always safe – and that it would be wrong to conclude that any illnesses or deaths of those who work on airliners are a result of working or travelling in an aircraft.

The airline industry insists there is no evidence that fume events do lasting harm, but people who work for airlines are increasingly worried that their health is being damaged and are keeping their own unofficial fume-event registers in which they record incidents.

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Austrian ban on glyphosate delayed due to a procedural error

 Richard Bruce draws attention to disappointing news from Austria.

In July last year, EuroNews reported that lawmakers in Austria’s lower house had voted to ban the herbicide glyphosate from 2020.

The motion, proposed by the Social Democratic (SPO) party, planned a complete ban of glyphosate products as a “precautionary” measure. “The scientific evidence of the plant poison’s carcinogenic effect is increasing. It is our responsibility to ban this poison from our environment,” the SPO leader, Pamela Rendi-Wagner, said in a statement.

A large majority in the Austrian parliament and public (according to poll results) support banning the chemical because of fears it causes cancer and Austria devotes more of its farmland to organic agriculture than any other EU member state

In June, the Wall Street Journal published an undertaking by Bayer AG, that it would pay up to $10.9 billion to settle tens of thousands of lawsuits with U.S. plaintiffs alleging the company’s Roundup herbicide causes cancer

Law firm Baum Hedlund notes that the ban was scheduled to take effect on Jan. 1, 2020, but the country’s caretaker leader, Chancellor Brigitte Bierlein (below left), a career judge who must sign bills for them to become law, refused to do this.

Francois Murphy, reporting for Reuters explains that the chancellor said, in a letter  posted online by the government’s spokesman, that the bill could not come into force because the European Commission was not properly notified under a process aimed at giving it and member states time to react: “Such a notification of a bill – required by European Union law and specified (in the bill) as a condition for it to take effect – was, however, not carried out properly”.

A number of European member states have partially banned glyphosate — a pesticide first marketed by Monsanto as Roundup — as concerns have been growing about the potential effect the herbicide could have on human health since a 2015 report by the World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer which classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans“.

Despite their members’ feelings, the EU renewed its approval of glyphosate in 2017 until the end of 2022 and gave France, Hungary, the Netherlands and Sweden the task of assessing the herbicide for further use within the bloc.

 

 

 

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Post 1945: a plague of profitable but destructive chemicals

2010 research findings: 34% of UK cancers in 2010 (106,845) were linked to smoking and alcohol and one in 25 cancers is linked to a person’s job – other causes included exposure to chemicals. The percentages may well have risen. Pollution is one of many factors thought to be responsible for rising rates of allergy.

Despite this knowledge, harmful substances are freely sold in order to enrich a few and any attempt to change this is met with powerful resistance which influences most politicians.

Richard Bruce sent a link to this parliamentary debate opened by the Countess of Mar, a doughty campaigner on behalf of farmers, whose health seriously deteriorated after being compelled by government to use organophosphate sheep dip. Lord Blyth referred to Richard’s experience, but a fuller account is given on his website.

Agriculture: Health & Safety Responsibilities

6 Feb 1996: Column 183

The Countess of Mar rose to ask Her Majesty’s Government what are the statutory duties of the Health and Safety Executive and the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to ensure that employers and employees carrying out exclusively agricultural operations are kept informed of, and adequately advised on, matters relating to health and safety.

The noble Countess said: In asking the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, I declare an interest. I have been exposed to organophosphate sheep dip and believe that I suffer chronic ill health as a result.

Some of the points made in the seven page report:

1. In 1951, Solly Zuckerman, later Lord Zuckerman, chaired a working party which investigated the health effects on workers using dinitro and organophosphorus compounds in agricultural sprays
2. It found that repeated low level exposures could result in chronic effects on human health
3. and recommended simplifying labelling and including the words “Deadly poison” in large letters on containers.
4. But not until 1994 were manufacturers required to put a skull-and-crossbones symbol on OP sheep dip containers to warn of toxicity.
5. MAFF introduced national dipping orders in 1976
6. The orders were rescinded in 1992
7. GPs, untrained in chemical toxicology, used irrelevant tests & many decided that these patients’ symptoms were psychosomatic.
8. Effective tests were not recommended by the HSE to GPs and consultants.
9. The Health and Safety Commission did not consider it appropriate to advise and inform farmers of the inherent dangers of these substances.
10. The Health and Safety Executive actively suppressed a 1990 field research project.
11. Internationally research published in the Lancet in May 1995 found damage to farmers and that there was a dose relationship.
12. Veterinary Products Committee rejected these research findings.
13. The Countess of Mar asked the Minister how many members of the VPC had the relevant neurobehavioural expertise to assess this research. (Ed: an undated account VPC Members Specialisms and Biographical Details Indicates that none had this expertise, though Dr Karin Burnett had studied several aspects of toxicology).
14. OPs are said to be too toxic to test on humans and maximum levels of exposure are arbitrarily set.
15. T.C. Marrs, senior medical officer at the Department of Health, adviser to Ministers and government committees, said at a meeting of farmers in October 1991, “You don’t have to convince me there is long-term damage. I know it”, but did not inform ministers.
16. Though the National Poisons Unit (NPU) at Guy’s Hospital confirmed that Richard Bruce had been poisoned by organophosphates and this was reported to the HSE, their inspectors did not visit Mr. Bruce or the farm where he worked to investigate the incident.
17. Lord Blyth asked: How serious does an incident have to be before it is thoroughly investigated? What powers do health and safety inspectors and EMAS doctors have to inspect premises and obtain other evidence?
18. The NPU withdrew the diagnosis of OP poisoning in a letter to the HSE, copied to Mr. Bruce’s GP on 2nd December 1994, but confirmed the diagnosis to the Benefits Agency in a letter of the same date.
19. Lord Beaumont cited an Australian case with damages awarded in a court of law and recommended that OP sheep dips be classified as prescription products until the results of the Government’s delayed researches are known.

Baroness Turner said “It is clear from the information received from a number of sources that much needs to be done to improve health and safety standards in this vital industry. Many in it are suffering the effects of pesticide poisoning, and many are dying as a result.

 

The report may be read here.

 

 

 

 

 

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Hawaii: calling Syngenta to account – an uphill struggle

Richard Bruce has drawn attention to a case reported by Reuters in February. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had been seeking a $4.8 million settlement from Syngenta, alleging that dozens of workers at Syngenta Seeds’ former research farm on Kauai, Hawaii were exposed to the neurotoxic pesticide chlorpyrifos in 2016 and 2017.

Sold to Hartung in 2017, but Syngenta will ‘contract Hawaii-based seed production activities with the new owner’.

The final settlement was a meagre $150,000, with $400,000 more to be spent on worker protection, far less – as Alexis Strauss, acting regional administrator for the EPA’s Region 9, acknowledged – than the maximum allowed under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) and its regulations designed to protect workers.

This would not surprise McKay Jenkins, whose book, Poison Spring  (Bloomsbury, 2014), co-written with E.G. Vallianatos, has been called “a jaw-dropping expose´ of the catastrophic collusion between the Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] and the chemical industry.

The IPS news agency reported that in 2013, the Kauai county council passed a law ordering the companies to create wider buffer zones and to disclose in far more detail than they do now what they spray, where and when.

A group of doctors in Waimea, which is surrounded by cornfields on three sides, testified that the number of cases of serious heart defects in local newborns was 10 times the national rate. But the head of the companies’ trade group, the Hawaii Crop Improvement Association, said that no credible source of statistical health information to support the claims had been seen. The association sued and a federal judge struck the law down, arguing that only the state can regulate pesticide use.

Background information

In Outside Online, whose wide remit includes health and fitness, Professor Jenkins writes about Kauai, a place where for years, multinational agrochemical companies have developed genetically modified seeds but kept their experiments secret from locals especially their use of pesticides to test the resilience of GM seeds to chemicals See his recent book: Food Fight: GMOs and the Future of the American Diet.

“In recent years over 16,000 acres of Kauai’s land have been leased to DuPont-Pioneer, Dow, and Syngenta because its tropical climate enables them to work their fields year-round. Company workers can plant experimental fields three seasons a year, which can cut in half the time it takes to develop a new genetically altered seed. They plant these seeds, then spray them with a wide variety of chemicals that are designed to kill weeds and insects. When they find food crops that can stand up to these toxins, they begin the process of taking them to market”.

The cases

In 2016 nineteen workers were exposed to chlorpyrifos after Syngenta sprayed the insecticide on a field of genetically engineered (GE) corn at its Kekaha farm. According to the complaint, the workers were allowed to reenter the field before the reentry period expired and without protective equipment. Ten workers were taken to the hospital and three were held overnight.

Pearl Linton hand-pollinating corn plants at a Syngenta seed farm on Kauai.

At the time of the incident, an inspector from the Hawaii Department of Agriculture (HDOA) was present on the Syngenta farm and the EPA brought a civil administrative enforcement action against Syngenta for violating several federal statutes including worker protection standards, allegedly affecting as many as 77 workers.

A second incident occurred in 2017 when Syngenta failed to post warnings for worker crews containing 42 employees after applying chlorpyrifos, an organophosphate pesticide. EPA also found that Syngenta failed to provide both adequate decontamination supplies on-site and prompt transportation to a medical facility for exposed workers.

Hawaii is now considering bills in the state House and Senate to ban chlorpyrifos, as well as a proposal to require farmers to notify the public when they use certain pesticides and to create buffer zones around some schools.  

Hawaii State Capitol, Makai Entrance

May the decisions taken there show concern for the health of its people and environment, regardless of vested interest, and justify its magnificent architecture

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Main source: https://www.outsideonline.com/2151976/ongoing-hawaiian-battle-shows-real-gmo-problem

 

 

 

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The effects of agro-chemicals have been largely ignored by regulatory systems

Richard Bruce has drawn attention to news of an article published in the journal Science, which records the findings of Prof Ian Boyd, a chief scientific adviser to the UK government’s Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and his colleague Alice Milner, who also works there on secondment. They find:

“The current assumption underlying pesticide regulation – that chemicals that pass a battery of tests in the laboratory or in field trials are environmentally benign when they are used at industrial scales – is false. The effects of dosing whole landscapes with chemicals have been largely ignored by regulatory systems. This can and should be changed.”

Spraying pesticides near homes and gardens: the Ecologist, Georgina Downes’ February article.

The scientists’ article also criticises the widespread use of pesticides as preventive treatments, rather than only when needed.

The UK government has repeatedly opposed increased European restrictions on widely used insecticides that are linked to serious harm in bees, but a partial ban was backed by other nations and introduced in 2013. However, the environment secretary, Michael Gove, said in July that changes to pesticide regulation were being considered: “Certainly, it is the case that anyone who has seen the [recent] scientific evidence must inevitably contemplate the need for further restrictions on their use.” After Brexit, he said: “Informed by rigorous scientific analysis, we can develop global gold-standard policies on pesticides and chemicals.”

A March UN report which denounced the “myth” that pesticides are necessary to feed the world was severely critical of the global corporations that manufacture pesticides

It accused them of the “systematic denial of harms”, “aggressive, unethical marketing tactics” and heavy lobbying of governments which has “obstructed reforms and paralysed global pesticide restrictions”.

Research also indicated that 78% of farms would be equally or more profitable when using less pesticide of all types

Prof Dave Goulson, at the University of Sussex, led research published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Plants, which analysed the pesticide use, productivity and profitability of almost 1,000 farms of all types across France. By comparing similar farms using high or low levels of pesticides, the scientists found that 94% of farms would lose no production if they cut pesticides and two-fifths would actually produce more. The results were most startling for insecticides: lower levels would result in more production in 86% of farms and no farms at all would lose production.

Prof. Goulson said: “While we have a system where farmers are advised by agronomists, most of whom work on commission for agrochemical companies, then inevitably pesticides will be massively overused. Even the few independent agronomists struggle to get independent information and advice to pass on to farmers . . . The UK has no systematic monitoring of pesticide residues in the environment and gives no consideration to safe pesticide limits at landscape scales; the lack of any limit on the total amount of pesticides used and the virtual absence of monitoring has meant that it can take years for the impacts to become apparent. This can and should be changed”.

Alice Milner concludes: “We want to start a discussion about how we can introduce a global monitoring programme for pesticides. It can take years to fully understand the environmental impact.” Many readers would welcome more urgency – to put it mildly. Richard comments, “Many readers would welcome more urgency; Richard comments: “A bit late in the day to spot the obvious, surely?”

 

 

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A patent application proving that science knows all about the deadly effects of organophosphates . . .

Richard Bruce draws attention to a patent application proving that science knows all about the deadly effects of organophosphates . . .

Richard writes:

I discovered the attached patent application made in the USA some time ago. If anyone ever had any doubts about just how much science knows about the deadly effects of organophosphates then this paper should show them that the claims made about there being no long-term effects are complete nonsense.

There is big money to be made in patenting treatments for illness but to do so they must explain the patent in detail. I once did all the legal work for a patent and it is a fascinating process. Ill health forced me to abandon it after a successful application! In this case that process means they had to describe the adverse health effects which they intend to treat. To this end the application lists the following effects of the poisons.

Have campaigners active in other fields thought of accessing the relevant patent applications?

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Postscript 

Whilst searching for a link to enable the reader to access a clearer text, I came across a piece of research published in 2016 – Method of treating organophosphate intoxication, WO 2016036724 A1, which, as Richard says, shows “just how much science knows about the deadly effects of organophosphates”. Go to https://www.google.com/patents/WO2016036724A1?cl=en

 

 

 

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