In the last issue of Pesticides News (PN47, pp12-14) Peter Ton, Silvère Tovignan and Simplice Davo Vodouhê wrote of endosulfan deaths and poisonings in Benin in the 1999/00 cotton-growing season.
The authors have continued their investigations into the scale of the endosulfan deaths and poisonings in Benin. New data show that the number in the 1999/00 season is significantly higher than the 37 cases. This figure only included the Northern Borgou province, which is one of the four cotton-producing provinces.
In the Beninese magazine Agri-Culture, the extension service CARDER reported another 19 cases of death related cotton-pesticide poisoning in 1999/00, all in the north western Atacora region. This brings the total of documented Borgou and Atacora deaths to 56 for the two provinces.
No figures are known for the Central Zou and the Southern Mono provinces, where cotton is also being grown. In fact, the investigation mission, which was charged by the Beninese Council of Ministers on 15 September 1999 to inventory food poisoning, was limited to the Borgou and Atacora provinces.
The new CARDER data for the Atacora province confirm the statement by Ton, Tovignan and Vodouhê that overall about 70 people will probably have died in Benin in the 1999/00 season due to the use of cotton pesticides – and of endosulfan in particular.
Peter Ton, Organic Cotton Consultant, May 2000.
[This article first appeared in Pesticides News No. 48, June 2000, page 17]