New rights 

Crop sprayers can legally pass under open windows of neighbouring residents – even if they are under medical care. Photo: Billy Ridgers

A recent survey has found that more chemicals are used to grow food in Britain than in any other major industrialised country(1).

Did you know? 
1. Highly poisonous pesticides are used on outdoor crops with no public warning.
2. At least one quarter of a million people live directly adjacent to fields regularly sprayed with pesticides(2), with millions more within a three-mile radius; recent research from California has calculated risks at this distance (see page 13). 
3. Walking is the most popular outdoor leisure activity in the UK(3). 
4. The UK Pesticide Residues Committee routinely records pesticide residues in human tissue and breast milk(4).
5. New research has found that the greatest reproductive effects from pesticides may arise from exposure to very low doses(5).
6. Currently there is no mandatory requirement for pesticide users to:

• notify the public in advance of spraying, or that spraying has taken place (except for a very few restricted substances, or if you are a bee-keeper) 
• disclose to the public information on the chemical products, or on the field spray history 
• leave no-spray zones, even if residents are under medical care, although there is an equivalent scheme to protect water courses 

PAN UK’s Action on Pesticide Exposure (PEX) Project aims to extend the statutory right to know. Our objectives are to achieve new public rights to:

• advance notice of pesticides applied: what they are, and when used
• signs on-site when pesticides are used
• a safety no-spray zone where needed
• disclosure by government of any harmful effects on health of pesticides
• disclosure of agrochemical industry interests of all officials involved in the registration of pesticides or the surveillance of pesticide-related ill-health
• disclosure of the total spectrum of all pesticide exposures: in food, water and the environment

1. Environmental Performance Reviews – United Kingdom, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 2002.
2. Census key statistics for urban and rural areas of Great Britain, England and Wales, Office for National Statistics,1991.
3. www.ramblers.org.uk/factshts/factsh12.html
4. Annual report of the Working Party on Pesticide Residues (now Pesticide Residues Committee) 1997.
5. Cavieres M, Jaeger J, Porter W, Developmental toxicity of a commercial herbicide mixture in mice: I. Effects on embryo implantation and litter size, Environmental health perspectives, Vol. 110, No. 11, November 2002.

Fill in our website questionnaire on Your Right to Know (www.pan-uk.org/forms/rtkform.htm) 
or contact PAN UK for a copy.

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