Latest HSE pesticide incidents report

The number of pesticide incidents reported to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has gone up by almost a third, according to the latest Pesticide Incidents Report 1999/2000, published in October. The total of 254 incidents is the highest on record, 29% higher than the average number of incidents over the previous seven years.

The majority of these extra cases do not involve ill-health. These ‘other complaints’ have increased by 119% since last year, the highest since records began, and 64% higher than the average over the past seven years.
    However, those incidents in which someone has been made ill (‘alleged ill-health incidents’, as the HSE describes them), have also increased: up by 15% from last year’s figure. This, however, is still lower than the average over the previous seven years.
    In spite of such a dramatic increase, the HSE play down these results, denying that there could be an upward trend in incidents. ‘… the 1999/2000 response is outside the range expected, and is clearly unusual’.

The HSE claim that the publication of the revised Reporting incidents of exposure to pesticides and veterinary medicines leaflet in February 1999, and the surrounding publicity, is behind the increase.
    They also point to ‘extensive media coverage of pesticide issues during late summer and the autumn of 1999’. But according to PAN UK files, there is a regular peak of publicity around the publication time of the annual report from the official pesticide residues monitoring body (the Pesticide Residues Committee, formerly the Working Party on Pesticide Residues).
    However, in June 1999 publicity did surround the Mersley Farms case on the Isle of Wight, on which the only case study given this year focuses. The fines imposed on Colin Boswell for the misuse of pesticides amounted to £220,000, a record sum imposed by the HSE.
    The report also covers the results from the Pesticide Incident Appraisal Panel. This is the body, comprising toxicologists, occupational health physicians and HSE officers, who decide whether or not someone’s ill-health will be officially recorded as due to pesticides.
    Notably, although only one case is given as ‘Confirmed’ the proportion of total incidents assessed as ‘Confirmed’ or ‘Likely’ is, at 27, the highest figure for five years. (AC)

Pesticide Incidents Report 1999/2000, HSE Agriculture and Wood Sector, The Pearson Building, 55 Upper Parliament Street, Nottingham, NG1 6AU, UK, Tel: 0115 971 2800. For a copy of the HSE leaflet Reporting incidents of exposure to pesticides and veterinary medicines INDG14(rev1) 2/99 C1000 contact PAN UK or HSE Books Tel: 01787 881165. The HSE website

[This article first appeared in Pesticides News No.50, December 2000, p18]