Editorial - Pesticides News No. 27

Pesticides News 27 focuses on the local authority pest control sector. We present a series of articles which demonstrate that weed control, turf management and timber treatment can be carried out without the use of chemicals. These factors will form a major part of the conference—Public Parks: Their place in our future organised by The Pesticides Trust [now PAN UK], Henry Doubleday Research Association and the Institute of Leisure and Amenity Management, to be held in April. The conference will look at the environmental role of public parks in conjunction with their community role.

    Brighton Council is a leader in its approach to pesticides reduction. An inter­view is featured covering its developing pest management policy. Articles from the US, Denmark and the UK describe local initiatives to implement zero or low pesticide use strategies in non-agricultural situations. In early April the first demonstrations in the UK of Waipuna Systems non-toxic weed control will take place, and Pesticides News will be there to report it.

    Elsewhere we feature an article from Brazil which highlights the poisonings and hazards faced by the people and environment of Rondonia in Amazonia. The use of organophosphate (OP) pesticides continues to raise concern. The acute occupational hazards faced in South Africa and the perplexing variable levels of OP residues in UK carrots, are outlined.

    In February, the UK House of Commons Agriculture Committee announced that it would be examining the workings of the Pesticides Safety Directorate and the Veterinary Medicines Directorate, both executive agencies of the Ministry of Agriculture. We suggest some health and environmental aspects which should be on the Committee’s agenda.

    At the end of March the environmental group Green Network will be presenting a petition to Virgina Bottomley, Secretary of State for Health, containing 10,000 signatories, which raises concern over the high levels of breast cancer in Lincolnshire and a possible link with the insecticide lindane.

    Environmental NGOs welcomed the decision on 1 March by the European Parliament to shelve the proposed European Union (EU) Directive on The Legal Protection of Biotechnological Inventions which would have made it legal to patent life forms in the EU.

Bhopal—£50,000 raised for gas victims

At the end of November 1994, the Pesticides Trust [PAN UK]hosted the Fourth Session of the Permanent Peoples Tribunal on Human Rights and Industrial Hazards, to mark the tenth anniversary of the Bhopal disaster. At the same time, we were involved in the placing of two large and dramatic advertisements in the UK national press on behalf of the International Medical Appeal, for funds to provide clinics for the gas victims in Bhopal. We are pleased to say that the appeals have so far raised nearly £50,000 to go to Bhopal, a mark of the generosity and sympathy from thousands of concerned individuals, that the Bhopal disaster has evoked. The Tribunal itself published a Judgement and a Charter of Health, Safety and Environmental Rights of Workers and Communities which we hope will provide a small step towards the prevention of another Bhopal. The appeal is still open, and readers who would like to subscribe are very welcome to send dona­tions made payable to The Pesticides Trust [PAN UK] Bhopal Account.

Environmentalist’s death In Madagascar

We are sad to note the death of Andrew Lees, Friends of the Earth’s Campaigns Director, earlier this year in the Malagasy jungle, probably from heat exhaustion. He had spent his Christmas holidays investigating the destruction that a proposed mining project could wreak on Madagascar’s unique wildlife and its forest dwell­ers.

    Andrew originally went to Friends of the Earth’s London head office in the mid 1980s as Countryside and Pesticides Campaigner. He had a keen interest in the impact of chemicals on the environment and was instrumental in making sure that Friends of the Earth continued campaigning on pesticide issues. In 1986 he presented evidence to the House of Commons Agriculture Committee, the last time it addressed pesticide safety (see above). Water pollution was another great obsession, especially in his native Norfolk. He pioneered the investigation of the UK’s compliance with European Community directives relating to water quality. He was a fierce and frank friend of the earth. (DB)

[This article first appeared in Pesticides News No.27, March 1995, page 2]