Exposure to pesticides is bad for your health!

You may have thought that it was generally acknowledged that continual exposure to pesticides is bad for you. It seems obvious doesn't it, a chemical that is designed to kill couldn't possibly safe, a chemical that bears a hazardous poison symbol couldn't but have an effect on the lives of those who live near treated areas. Yet this is what the British government have been claiming.

This week UK campaigner Georgina Downs won her legal challenge against DEFRA (Department for Environment and Rural Affairs) over pesticides. From the age of 11 Downs had been suffering from ill health and as an adult she started to investigate the effects pesticides could be having on her. Living in a rural area, surrounded by farmland she would have been repeatedly exposed to pesticides from a very early age. The flaw in the governments case was that their data on the effects of pesticides only assessed the risk posed to Human beings by short term exposure to chemicals. It did not consider the continual exposure that country residents could experience or the effect that a cocktail of chemicals sprayed throughout the year could have on the human body.

The ruling comes as the British government stands to oppose the EU directive on pesticides which calls for:

the prohibition of pesticide use in substantial no spray zones around residential areas, parks, public gardens, sports grounds, school grounds, playgrounds, amongst other places, especially to protect sensitive groups, such as, babies, children, pregnant women, the elderly, those with pre-existing medical conditions and who may be taking medication, along with all other vulnerable groups.

A directive, which seems to support the court ruling and which will hopefully, hand in hand with this judgement encourage the British government to review the way they asses the harmful effects of pesticides. Sadly, even if the new directive is passed, it won't come into effect until 2010.

Further reading:
UK Pesticides Campaign
PAN UK on pesticide exposure