A breath of fresh air? 

Affected by chronic ill-health, Georgina Downs explains how her family’s exposure to spray drift has forced her to take up the pesticide regulation issue.

Pesticide campaigner Georgina Downs and her father Ray – who has to wear protective equipment against spray drift in his own garden. Photo: Drew Gardner.

In the early 1980s, my parents purchased a piece of land in the countryside on which they designed and built their ‘dream home’. They believed this would be a healthy environment in which to bring up their family and certainly could never have predicted the nightmare it would become. 
    In 1984, about a year after we moved into the house, a local farmer bought up the surrounding fields to be used for intensive agriculture. We were never warned about the dangers of the chemicals being used. From the age of 11, I would regularly be in the garden when crop-spraying was taking place, the tractor passing only a few feet away from me. 
    Throughout the years, I suffered ill-health: flu-type illnesses, sore throats covered in blisters, and headaches, amongst other things. Not once were we ever told about the pesticides by anyone, so for nine years we continued to have all windows and doors open in the summer during the spraying season and would regularly be in the garden during spraying. 
    By 1991 my health had deteriorated to such an extent that I ended up in hospital with severe muscle wastage, muscle weakness and other chronic symptoms. It was then that I started to look at what was in our surrounding environment. I was astonished to discover that the tractor was actually spraying ‘cocktails’ of poisonous chemicals into the air where we live and breathe and even more astonished to find out that a farmer is legally permitted to do so under existing government policies. 
    Two years ago I started my investigations into the history of crop-spraying as I realised that the only way to prevent my family from being poisoned further was to effect change at policy level. I very quickly discovered serious fundamental flaws in the regulations governing the approval and use of pesticides. 
    The official method of assessing the dangers and risks to public health from agricultural spraying [and under which chemical usage is approved] is based on the model of a ‘bystander’ and on the assumption that there will only be occasional short-term exposure of no more than five minutes. This model is dangerously inadequate and bears no resemblance whatsoever to the sort of exposure experienced by people who actually live in sprayed areas, all day, every day. This means that there is not, and never has been, an appropriate or realistic assessment of the risks to public health for people who actually live near heavily sprayed fields – and yet crop-spraying has been a predominant feature of agriculture for over 50 years. 
    Pesticides are, by their very nature, designed to kill living organisms so it is not surprising that these chemicals are highly poisonous substances. Many people have regularly suffered, and reported serious ill-health following exposure to these chemicals. Pesticides have been strongly linked to many illnesses and diseases, including various cancers, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, motor neurone disease, myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) or chronic fatigue syndrome, asthma, allergies, multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS) amongst others. Vulnerable groups include babies, children, pregnant women, the elderly and those with pre-existing medical problems and chemical sensitivity. 
    Yet there is no legal obligation for farmers to notify anyone of any intended spraying application or to supply information on the chemicals being used, regardless of whether adverse health effects are known to exist. 
    I was invited to make a presentation to the government’s Advisory Committee on Pesticides last year. I produced a video using dummies at the edge of our property to illustrate to the Committee the reality of the situation and to provide evidence that crop-spraying is posing unacceptable risks to public health. When I asked the audience to raise their hands if they thought that the video had shown an acceptable system for protecting public health, not a single hand went up. 
    I also met Lord Whitty (Minister for Food and Farming) and Michael Meacher (Minister for Environment) in December to show them the video and to present the case for a change in the regulations and legislation governing agricultural spraying. Immediate action is required from both the British government and the European Union because public health is not being protected from the high level of risk inherent in spraying over 25,000 tonnes of agricultural chemicals on British farmland every year. 
    There should be a ban on crop-spraying and the use of pesticides near to homes, schools, workplaces and other places of human habitation or activity. This land could be farmed using sustainable non-chemical management practices. There should be a new legal obligation to inform people that spraying is to take place and to supply information on the chemicals to be used.
    The government and their advisors must recognise the effects that pesticides have on human health. Preventing pesticide poisoning is the only way to protect people from pesticide related ill-health. The human rights aspect of this issue is extremely important: everyone has a recognised right to protect their health and the health of their family.
    The other key issue is that of responsibility and liability. Whenever I have asked the question as to who is liable for people being poisoned by chemicals, everybody blames everybody else. The Health and Safety Executive blames government policy, the government blames Europe or the farmers, and others blame the manufacturers. No one is accepting responsibility and there is no legal redress for all the people who have had their health and lives destroyed by pesticide-related disease. The government must accept that it has a financial responsibility for the risks imposed and damage caused as a direct result of government policy. 
    So what of our ‘dream home’? We now have to spend every summer shut up in a boiling hot house, which is just unbearable and suffocating, to try as much as possible to reduce exposure to these chemicals. If my father does go outside during spraying, he has to wear a respirator, goggles and other protective clothing. This when he is on his own land. 
    It is time that ministers recognised that, to protect the public’s health, they must take decisive action on this issue. Is a breath of fresh air too much to ask for? 

You can write to the author of this piece at georgedowns29@yahoo.co.uk

[This article first appeared in Pesticides News No. 60, June 2003, page 12-13]