GROWING PROBLEM Pesticides might make your garden grow, but they also do the same for childhood and occupational tumours.

A ‘dramatic’ increase in a range of occupational and childhood cancers has been linked to pesticide exposures.

Public health researchers, writing in a new report for the Chemicals, Health and Environment Monitoring Trust (CHEM Trust), call on the UK government to step up action to ban the most harmful pesticides and to bring in a duty for the public to be informed before spraying takes place.

They add that safer alternatives are available and are preferable to attempting to avoid occupational or environmental exposures to inherently dangerous substances.

‘A review of the role pesticides play in some cancers: Children, farmers and pesticide users at risk?’, published on 2 July 2010, links exposure prior to conception or during pregnancy to higher rates of childhood cancer and warns that farm workers could also be developing cancers caused by pesticide exposures at work.

The report says several studies “strongly suggest” that pesticide exposures are associated with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL), leukaemia, prostate cancer and other hormone-related cancers. It adds that environmental factors “must be partly to blame” for massive increases in the incidence of certain cancers since 1975 – because genes in a population do not change that quickly.

Since the mid-1970s, cases of NHL have more than doubled in Britain, prostate cancer has tripled, testicular cancer has doubled and breast cancer in women has increased by two-thirds, and in men has quadrupled, the report notes. In the 35 years up to 1998, childhood cancer in Britain increased by 35 per cent, it adds. Although the increasing numbers may be in part a result of better diagnosis, the report authors believe environmental factors, including pesticides, are a contributory factor.

Stirling University’s Professor Andrew Watterson, a co-author of the report, commented: “Occupational and environmental cancers have been a neglected public health issue in the UK for decades. The report highlights the substantial nature of the threat from pesticide exposure.

“In the UK, oversight of pesticides has continued to err on the side of products rather than people and of course relies on data generated initially by the pesticide manufacturers. The regulatory response has usually been ‘if in doubt, do continue using pesticides’ when the scientific literature is littered with examples of products that have been cleared in the past emerging as known or suspect human carcinogens.

“There is a long-overdue and urgent need to mount a cancer prevention campaign on pesticides based on effective precautionary principles.”

Gwynne Lyons, director of CHEM Trust and co-author of the report, commented: “Research suggests that pregnant women, in particular, should avoid direct exposure to pesticides, if possible.”

She accused the UK of dragging its feet on risks posed by chemicals. “It is high time that the UK was more supportive of EU proposals to take a tougher approach to reducing exposure to potentially harmful chemicals,” she said. “If the UK is to shed its image of being the laggard in the EU, then the UK government must robustly implement the new EU pesticides legislation in order to try and reduce the burden of cancer in children, farmers and others exposed to pesticides.”

Professor Watterson said it was not realistic to expect the public to avoid farms and other areas where pesticides may be used. Instead, he said, the government needed to strengthen regulation to remove the risks in the first place. “There are substitutes available,” he said. “There are less hazardous alternatives.”

NOT GREEN Banned pesticides are given the hard sell in Bangladesh, killing thousands each year.

Thousands of Bangladeshi workers are dying of pesticide poisoning each year, as a result of unsafe use of often banned products.

Meanwhile, safer, greener agricultural methods are ignored in the face of a sustained and richly-resourced promotional campaign by multinational pesticide producers.

An annual government health survey has found that pesticide-related poisoning may be responsible for several thousand deaths each year in Bangladesh. 

The 2009 Health Bulletin, released in December and based on health statistics from 2008, recorded 7,438 pesticide-related poisoning deaths at more than 400 hospitals nationwide amongst men and women aged 15-49.

“Considering the widespread illiteracy of our farmers, it should be made mandatory for pesticide producers and sellers to print pictures on pesticide containers showing how to use and dispose of them properly after use,” Mohammad Mahfuzullah, an environmental activist and executive director of the Centre for Sustainable Development (CFSD), told the UN’s IRIN news service.

Compounding the problem is the increasing pesticide consumption in the country, including many which are highly toxic.

According to the most recent government figures available, 37,712 tons of pesticides were sold in Bangladesh in 2007, an increase of 145.3 per cent on 2001.

Bangladesh’s 1985 Pesticide Rules outline stringent procedures for the registration, import, manufacture, sale, packaging and advertisement of pesticides.

But pesticide importers and traders pay scant attention to these regulations, experts say.

Illiterate farmers are also persuaded by unscrupulous traders and a plethora of incentive schemes to buy unregistered pesticide formulations that promise to protect crops against pest attacks and disease.

It means safer products and alternative greener, pesticide free approaches, like integrated pest management, don’t get a look in.

According to Pesticides Action Network Asia and the Pacific (PAN AP): “Pesticides prevail because a multi-billion dollar industry is behind them, exerting great influence on international standard setting bodies, national governments, and local communities.”

It adds: “The enormous influence that these chemical corporations wield, because of their economic power, is a major factor in why pesticides use persists in our agriculture in spite of the growing evidences of human poisonings and even deaths, devastating environmental contamination, and the evidences of greater yields which can be achieved when the chemicals are replaced by agroecological practices.”

In Bangladesh, suppliers continue to sell many chemical substances banned by the government, as well as chemical compounds such as aldrin and endrin, which are classified as “highly hazardous” by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Many pesticides are sold unlabelled or under false labels, and with no clear warnings or instructions to farmers.