Families' lives poisoned by crop spraying

Pesticides industry and Government accused of risking the health of hundreds of thousands of people living near farms

Mark Townsend
Sunday May 2, 2004
The Observer

They left London to raise a family in the rural serenity of Lincolnshire. Now they fear the fields that surround their cottage are slowly killing them because of the pesticides used to spray crops.
Within a month of being born last July, Adam Spencer stopped breathing twice after farmland was sprayed. 'He suddenly turned purple. I noticed he had breathing problems and then he went limp,' said his mother Helen. Paramedics were baffled about why the once healthy 8lb 6oz baby's airways had suddenly shut down.
On the first occasion she almost lost their son, every window in their home had been removed for double-glazing. For hours, clouds of acrid-tasting chemicals wafted through the property. Weeks later Adam would almost die again after being caught in a cloud of chemicals at his four-year-old sister's birthday party in the garden.
This week the Government will decide whether the laws on crop spraying should be changed. At present, farmers are allowed repeatedly to spray cocktails of chemicals right up to the windows of homes, schools and offices. Nor do they have to inform residents when they use pes ticides that could prove harmful, or even surrender information on which chemicals have been used. Families insist only a sizeable buffer zone can protect their homes. Pesticides can travel miles in the air, studies say.
More than a quarter of a million people live next to farmland regularly sprayed with chemicals. Now the issue has become a bitter battleground with a network of families ranged against the multi-billion pound pesticides industry and the Government.
Hundreds of families believe they are victims of pesticide poisoning, according to a database seen by The Observer. Complaints range from headaches and acute lethargy to cancers, birth defects and miscarriage, symptoms that experts maintain are compatible with chemical poisoning. Cancer clusters in villages encircled by farmland feature time and time again on the compilation of suspect sufferers. Helen - not her real name - has three friends who have suffered miscarriages and knows four neighbours with cancer.
Whether action will be taken is up to Rural Affairs Minister Alun Michael following a 10-month investigation by the Government's Pesticides Safety Directorate. Of the original 758 people consulted in the inquiry, more than 700 were from chemical companies or organisations opposed to any new restrictions on the use of toxic chemicals. Professor David Coggon, head of the Advisory Committee on Pesticides, even suggests that those who think they experience adverse health effects from chemicals may be imagining them.
Admitting the chemicals may be responsible for a cata logue of adverse health complaints could leave the Government open to huge compensation claims.
'The Government has continued to ignore the evidence of what is happening in reality due to massive legal implications,' said Georgina Downs, a leading anti-pesticide campaigner who was among the first to link the chronic ill-health she and her family suffered with the spraying of a field adjoining their Sussex garden.
Tests on the 31-year-old offer an insight into the cocktail of chemicals ingested by those living in such areas. They found lindane and DDT - both banned in the UK - as well as many other toxic residues in her body fat.
Despite such findings, the Government appears unimpressed. Scientists advising Michael believe pesticides remain safe if used properly. A parliamentary response from Michael last month insists all pesticides have been proved to be harmless to humans and the environment.
In sharp contrast, it is a federal offence in the US to claim pesticides are safe. And a new study by Canadian physicists showed evidence linking pesticide exposure to cancers. Children were particularly vulnerable, it warned.

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