ACP Open Meeting

Georgina Downs (PEX Steering Group member) and Alison Craig were invited by the Advisory Committee on Pesticides to make presentations at their Open Meeting on 10th July on the 'bystander risk assessment'. This is the safety calculation made for people who are not sprayer operators, but who live adjacent to sprayed fields - we estimate, in England and Wales alone, at least a quarter of a million people - or who walk across them regularly.

Georgina's main arguments at the meeting were:

Exposure to pesticides is extremely hazardous and is covered by layers of regulation that are primarily aimed at protecting operators/agricultural workers.
The risk assessments carried out before pesticides are approved take no account of the long-term effects of repeated, unprotected exposures to mixtures of pesticides and other chemicals and the high level exposures, for those who live in agricultural areas.
The scientific assessment of the toxicity of pesticides is flawed and based on creating visible symptoms in laboratory animals, which is unlikely to detect the adverse health effects experienced by people suffering pesticide-related ill-health.
When people do suffer ill-health effects following pesticide exposures, they obtain little support from authorities or the legal system, whose purpose it is to protect them, because of the failure to recognise the dangers and risks at the approval level.

Christopher Booker covered Georgina's campaign extensively in the Sunday Telegraph of 28th July:

Our green and poisoned land

The Government's watchdog on pesticide safety has never known anything like its public meeting in York earlier this month. Professor David Coggon, chairman of the Advisory Committee on Pesticides (ACP), had agreed to allow Georgina Downs, a young singer and former assistant television floor manager, to show a video of the "dream home" in Sussex, where she and her family have lived for 20 years. Since 1984 the farm next door has been turned over to intensive agriculture, and the video showed a huge crop-spraying machine passing repeatedly over the field, pouring out highly toxic chemicals, which drifted over the garden and anyone in it.

For nine years, Georgina explained in her commentary, she and her family were plagued with all sorts of mysterious illnesses. In 1993 they finally realised that their debilitating sickness coincided with the spraying, often several times a day, and took refuge in the house, closing all doors and windows until the spraying ceased. Her father, Ray Downs, a company director, has become so ill that for weeks in the summer he can only go into his garden dressed in respirator, goggles and full protective clothing.
Georgina's own health became so bad that a year ago she decided to give up work and to unravel how the law could allow them to be put at risk in this way. What she discovered, to her astonishment, was that, for the 230,000 people who live next to intensively sprayed farms, there is virtually no legal protection from the 25.000 tonnes of poisons poured onto Britain's farmland each year. The Pesticides Safety Directorate (PCD) tests for the effects of exposure to toxic chemicals last for a minute or less, yet spray-drift can often hang in the air, exposing anyone in range for up to 24 hours.

With remarkable dedication, Georgina repeatedly interviewed every relevant regulatory agency, such as the Health and Safety Executive, which has a statutory duty to protect public health from unsafe working practices. Again and again she came up against that brick wall familiar to thousands of pesticide victims, whereby officials insist that there is no "scientific proof' that chemicals approved for safe use by Government agencies can cause harm, even though data sheets may list every kind of damage they can cause and safety precautions that must be taken. A typical response - from an HSE inspector - was: "Just because you can smell the chemicals, it does not mean you are inhaling them."

Eventually Georgina made the video of what happens in her own garden, complete with chilling shots of a mannequin and a doll being exposed to the cocktail of toxic chemicals that regularly floats over the fence from the next-door field, and accepted Professor Coggon's invitation to show it at the ACP's public meeting in York.

When her showing ended, to stunned silence, Georgina asked the audience if this showed an acceptable system for protecting public health. Not a single hand went up.

Professor Coggon later wrote to thank Georgina for her "contribution" and said that the ACP had asked the PSD "to commission further research that could provide additional reassurance that the methods which are currently adopted for assessing bystander exposure are satisfactory". Even if exposure to toxic chemicals "does not pose unacceptable risks to health" it might be considered "socially unacceptable" and "we are drawing the issue to the attention of ministers".

Georgina Downs, who also presented the meeting with a carefully argued, scientifically informed paper, is a very determined young lady. She is now hoping for a chance to show her video to ministers with responsibility for pesticides, such as Michael Meacher, and asks anyone who believes that they have suffered health damage from toxic spray-drift to leave details with the Pesticides Action Network at alisoncraig@pan-uk.org or at Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4JX, Tel: 020 7065 0905, Fax: 020 7065 0907.

Her presentation included a stunning video showing the sprayer passing the end of her garden, showering droplets of pesticides on mannequins she had arranged on her lawn to demonstrate the hazards. When the film ended, Georgina asked the audience for a show of hands: did they think this was an acceptable system for protecting public health? Not a single hand went up.

Alison highlighted the cases of six PEX members in her presentation and was accompanied to the meeting by organophosphate overspray victim, Mr Alex McBain, who courageously travelled to York to attend from his home on the Isle of Wight.

We argued that it was unacceptable that highly toxic pesticides are allowed to be used adjacent to residential areas, when there is no mandatory notification. Individuals including Mr McBain should not be at risk of suffering disabling illness as a result of being oversprayed by, for example, organophosphates.

We emphasised that pesticides are approved with no risk assessment of their effects on people who are already ill, so people under medical care should especially have the right to a safety buffer zone if their homes are adjacent to farmland, and of notification. Currently they have no protection whatsoever, as the Green Code merely states that it is 'good practice' to notify such people of spraying.

We pointed out the very weak stipulations in the Green Code whereby risks to users of rights of way are acknowledged, but nonetheless, no rights of notification of spraying are allowed to walkers.

Describing the case of Mrs Tessa Lawson and her family we were able to provide evidence that, even if a GP is concerned about several patients whose health has been affected by local spraying, the Health & Safety Executive do not necessarily record or follow up these cases.

Mr Stephen Leach and his family are another form of 'bystander': he has recently discovered that his private water supply has been contaminated for years by pesticides from the adjacent horticultural operation. No risk assessment is taking account of this sort of exposure.

As a result of our participation, the issue was featured twice on Radio 4's Today programme. It was also raised in the general readership magazine Country Walking, in July.

Disappointingly, the ACP resisted our campaign, denying that exposures in these circumstances are significant.

There will be a full transcript of the Open Meeting on 10th July in due course on the ACP website: www.pesticides.gov.uk/committees/acp/acp.htm Their conclusions from the Open Meeting are:
There was a vigorous discussion on the assessment of risk to bystanders at the Advisory Committee on Pesticides annual open meeting. Members concluded that on the basis of the information currently available the risk assessment for bystanders used at present provides adequate protection, even if spray is applied to the edge of a field. The Committee has asked PSD [Pesticide Safety Directorate] to collect some further experimental data to provide further support to this view. Nonetheless, the Committee recognises that many may consider it socially unacceptable to spray right to the boundary of a neighbour's property. If Ministers agree, they may wish to consider options to restrict this practice. Similar discussions with respect to people using public rights of way across fields also concluded that current risk assessments provide adequate protection.

Therefore PEX will continue to work to build up awareness of this issue until a breakthrough is achieved and public health is given higher priority in pesticide regulation.

[Published in PEX Newsletter No.16, September 2002]