New publication - Silent Invaders: Pesticides, livelihoods and women’s health 

Editors Miriam Jacobs and Barbara Dinham present UK Environment Minister Michael Meacher with a copy of Silent Invaders for the ‘Day of No Pesticide Use’: 3 December 2002. Photo: Billy Ridgers

Pesticide exposure has recognised impacts on human health and the environment. Highly persistent pesticides were used with impunity for almost 40 years before alarming results became apparent which led first to national bans and, since 2000, to global bans. Acutely toxic pesticides are widely applied, particularly in developing countries, where there is often little regard to scandalously inappropriate conditions of use. 
    ‘Long-term, low-level exposures are linked to chronic diseases, cancer in children and adults, adverse reproductive outcomes, Parkinson’s and other neurological diseases,’ points out Dr. Marion Moses of the Pesticide Education Centre in California, long-term supporter of women’s and agricultural workers’ right to health. Precise chronic effects, and the link from specific pesticide to human health impact over time are virtually impossible to trace, given the 800-1000 active ingredients, tens of thousands of pesticide formulations, multiple exposures, many routes of contact, and product changes over time. 
In the 1990s, new concerns emerged with the recognition that pesticides can interfere with the hormonal systems. ‘endocrine disrupting’ pesticides confuse the body’s chemical messengers that control development, growth and reproduction. 
    Silent Invaders: pesticides, livelihoods and women’s health brings together 30 case studies and scientific papers that show the effects of pesticides, particularly on farming communities and agricultural workers. ‘This new work follows in the footsteps of Rachel Carson’s pioneering work, Silent Spring. It gives much detail of pesticide hazards and explanations of the toxicity manifested, and focuses on the specific dangers to women,’ said Professor Dennis Parke, former Chair of the World Health Organisation Joint Meeting on Pesticide Residues.
    Why focus on women? Regulators and policy makers often believe that women are less exposed to pesticides. Silent Invaders shows that this assumption grossly under-estimates the reality of rural lives, and potential exposure in urban areas. It stresses the importance of studying impacts on both women and men, of taking account of gender divisions of labour, of the imbalances in the economic and political realities of women and men’s lives, and of the clear physiological differences between the sexes.
Silent Invaders calls for wider application of the precautionary principle. Regulatory controls draw heavily on evidence from risk assessments, which in turn rely predominantly on laboratory tests and standardised exposure limits. 

Silent Invaders: Pesticides, Livelihoods and Women’s Health, edited by Miriam Jacobs and Barbara Dinham, with a foreward by Clare Short MP, Secretary of State for International Development, UK. Published by Zed Books, London and New York, in association with Pesticide Action Network UK, London, 2003. ISBN 1 85649 995 2 (Hb) / ISBN 1 85649 996 0 (Pb), 342pp. Price £14.95, £12 to supporters.

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