Pesticides are tested and approved almost exclusively on the basis of data from laboratory animals. Uncertainty about extrapolating such data means that some information on human health effects may only be apparent after products are legally approved and in use.
Pesticide poisonings reported directly to pesticide companies comprise some of the relatively few incidents per year in the UK of pesticide-related ill-health which come to the attention of industry, regulators or healthcare providers. It is significant and disturbing, therefore, that a post-approvals monitoring system intended to collect data on human health effects from reported exposures has not been functioning. If even this information is not reaching government, what chance is there that the effects of long-term low-dose exposures which victims may be unaware of, will ever be detected?
At the end of 2003, and prompted by PAN UK, the Pesticides Safety Directorate (PSD) sent questionnaires to companies requesting information on possible health effects reported to them during the previous year, information which companies had been legally required to divulge since
1998(2). Companies were initially given a two month deadline to respond to PSD’s questionnaire. Their lack of response prompted PSD to extend this deadline. However, in spite of several extensions, 13 companies still failed to respond, prompting the PSD to revoke all 33 of their product approvals.
In December 2004 the PSD published a summary of their
findings(3) containing brief descriptions of 137 poisonings, indicating the pesticide active ingredient(s), the approval holding company, whether it is an amateur or professional product, symptoms experienced, and actions taken. The PSD placed the reports into three categories: ‘Approved use’ (62 cases), ‘Accident or misuse’ (55 cases) and ‘Enquiries and unclassified’ (20 cases).
| Company response to PSD survey | |
| 171 approval holders responded. The 16 approval holders, accounting for 80 per cent of the UK pesticides market, who submitted the 137 poisoning reports are: | |
| Agrichem (International) Ltd BASF Bayer CropScience Ceraxagri S.A. Crompton Europe Ltd Dow AgroSciences Ltd DuPont (UK) Ltd Maxicrop (UK) Ltd |
Monsanto UK Ltd pbi Home & Garden Ltd Rentokil Initial pls Scotts Company (UK) Ltd Syngenta Crop Protection UK Ltd Syngenta Crop Protection UK Ltd (ISK Biosciences) Vitax Ltd William Sinclair Horticulture Ltd |
| The following 13 Approval Holders did not respond to the survey: | |
| Compo GmbH & Co KG SA Sinon EU Corporation Top Farm Formulations Marnoch Ventures Ltd Nissan Chemical Europe GmbH Quadrangle Agrochemicals Chemsearch NCH (UK) Ltd |
Indofil Chemicals Company Tomen France SA Elf Atochem Agri SA Atochem Agri BV Yule Catto Consumer Chemicals Ltd Unistar Ltd |
| The following products have been suspended or revoked as a result of the survey: Clean-Up-360 (M05076), Floranid Lawn Feed with Weed killer (M11508), Glister (M11413), Glyphosate-360 (M05319), Marnoch Binoxy (M10622), Marnoch Carbadil 10 (M10338), Marnoch Chlorothalonil (M09763), Marnoch Clodim (M09852), Marnoch Glyphosate (M09744), Marnoch Kempo (M09918), Marnoch Mancym (M10130), Marnoch Metazachlor (M09761), Marnoch Penor D (M09871), Marnoch Phonet (M09979), Marnoch Phorm (M10773), Marnoch Vinol (M09815), Poseidon (M11040), Quadrangle Chlormequat 700 (M03401), Quadrangle Hinge (M08070), Systol M (M03480), Top Farm Carbendazim-435 (M05307), Top Farm Fluazinam (M07683), Top Farm Propyzamide 500 (M05484), Gro-Tard II (M04462), Manfil (M11093), Dequiman MZ (M06870), Triherbicide CIPC (M06426), Trimangol 80 (M06070), TWK Total Weedkiller (M06332), Unistar Glyphosate 360 (M05928), Unistar Glyphosate 360 (M06332), PP Captan 80 WG (M11006), PP Captan 83 (M08768) | |
Reported health effects
The most disturbing ‘Approved use’ incidents included the following: a man had a bad rash and blistering after brushing against a bush sprayed five days earlier with bupirimate, triforine and pirimicarb. Children were sick when the field next to a primary school was sprayed with clodinafop-propargyl and trifluralin. A child’s hands and face ‘swelled up like a balloon’ after playing on an area recently sprayed with diquat. Paraquat and diquat caused blistering on children’s feet. A man had swollen joints, puffy eyes and a rash on his legs after playing golf on an area sprayed with clopyralid, fluroxypyr and MCPA. A man had heart failure but recovered after using a product containing MCPA, mecoprop-P and ferrous sulphate.
The PSD states that ‘no causal link between the pesticide and the symptoms described has been proven’, and in reply to a Parliamentary Question raised by the Countess of Mar, Lord Whitty acknowledged that ‘the reports provided in response to this exercise do not contain the toxicological data or medical records necessary to provide proof of a causal
link(4).’ The PSD has passed the results to the Advisory Committee on Pesticides and the Health & Safety Executive’s Pesticide Incidents Appraisal Panel without requesting this information from the companies. Without further details these bodies will be unable to accurately assess the implications of each case.
The PSD plays down the legal implications of the survey results. Director of Policy, Dr Sue Popple,
states(5) that the PSD ‘do not have any plans to take regulatory action with respect to any of the reports received as a result of the study. … There is nothing at this stage to indicate that any of the returns that we received would eventually be considered to be adverse data.’ She indicates the PSD will be repeating the survey for 2003 and
2004(6), but will not be asking companies for other reports dating back to March 1998, when the legal obligation to submit such reports was imposed.
PAN UK welcomes the revocation of product approvals held by companies failing to submit data. However stronger measures are required to ensure that details of incidents are known and acted upon as a minimum. PAN
UK proposes that:
1. Answer to Parliamentary Question from David Drew MP, 4131 03/ 04, number 375, 21 July 2004, by the Rt Hon Alun Michaels MP.
2. ‘Deadline for companies to hand over data’, Pesticides News 63, March 2004, page 20.
3. Pesticides Safety Directorate website ‘Questionn-
aire on the possible effects of pesticides on human health’ www.pesticides.gov.uk/approvals.asp?id=1479
4. Reply to Parliamentary Question HL704,
4 February 2005.
5. Letter from Dr Sue Popple, PSD, to Alison Craig, PAN UK, 28th January 2005.
6. www.pesticides.gov.uk/approvals.asp?id=1515[This article first appeared in Pesticides News No. 67, March 2005, page 3]