Pesticide exposure is not just relevant to farmers and agricultural workers who are in direct contact with these substances. Families can also be exposed directly through food, occupational use, gardening and household use, where homes are near sprayed fields, and through a parent’s professional or amateur use. Children can also be exposed in school playgrounds, rolling on park lawns and on football pitches.
Pesticides don’t respect boundaries and spread into water, and accumulate in plants and animals. So pesticide exposure doesn’t just matter to those who work directly with chemicals. Pesticide exposure concerns us all.
The Collegium Ramazzini, an international academy of over 180 experts in environmental sciencies and occupational health, has recently highlighted the growing body of scientific evidence demonstrating links between exposure to hazardous pesticides and potentially serious adverse impacts on human health. Several approved pesticides are considered carcinogenic and may contribute to the development of life-threatening diseases such as breast cancer, colon cancer, leukaemia and lymphomas. There is also scientific evidence associating children’s and pregnant women’s exposure to pesticides with cancers in childhood and later in life (EP ENVI study). Further scientific evidence is also emerging on the disastrous effects of combined pesticides on human health. In a new study commissioned for the European Commission, Professor Andreas Kortenkamp, the leading researcher, states that it has been demonstrated that the effects of mixtures of chemical substances are considerably more pronounced than the effect of individual components.
To protect vulnerable groups like unborn babies, and children who are particularly vulnerable to potential adverse health impacts, and that protective mechanisms such as metabolic pathways are immature, a responsible pesticides policy would apply the precautionary principle.