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**Updated** MEPs emphasize health and environment with pesticide regulation

New EU legislation on pesticides was approved with amendments by the European Parliament on 23 October 2007. Parliament supported the ban on aerial pesticides and the prohibition of use of pesticides in buffer zones around water.

MEPs voted to revise the criteria and procedures for approving pesticides. The purpose of the legislation is to:

- improve protection of health and the environment
- support farming
- reduce animal testing
- boost competition among pesticide manufacturers.

No three-zone EU

The original text of the Commission called for the division of the EU into three zones (north, centre and south). MEPs clearly rejected this plan in which countries would have had to accept neighbours’ pesticide authorization decisions. Instead, MEPs prefer a single, EU-wide system of mutual recognition where Member States could reserve the right to accept, reject or restrict the approval based on national circumstances.

"This step recognizes that environmental and agricultural conditions within Europe are very diverse and that the zones would have been inconsistent. MEPs wish to enable Member States further to restrict pesticide use and better protect health and environment," said Elliot Cannell from PAN Europe.

Ban of harmful substances

Parliament supported the Commission’s plan to ban substances that are genotoxic, carcinogenic, toxic to reproduction or endocrine disrupting. Parliament voted for the committee’s further restriction of the minor exceptions allowed by the Commission. Substances with hormonal, neurotoxic or immunotoxic effects were added to the banned category. Also, the committee called for special consideration to be taken for vulnerable groups such as pregnant women, fetuses and children. Parliament added "residents and bystanders" to this category.

Safer alternatives

MEPs supported the "substitution principle" in the draft regulation. The principle states that new products must not be approved so easily if they contain substances that could be substituted with a safer alternative. Member states must make comparative assessments of different substances by weighing the risks and benefits. In addition, the Parliament decided that animal testing should be used only as a last resort.

The environmental and health NGOs welcome the strong support of the MEPs for ensuring that pesticides are included among the substances which are considered harmful to human health and the environment. Monica Guarinoni, pesticides policy officer at the Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL) said, "This vote shows that Parliament has begun taking into account increasing scientific evidence that pesticide exposure, even at low doses, is a threat to people’s health and even to the development of children’s brains."

Pesticides package

This legislation is part of a pesticides package, which is designed to provide the EU with updated rules governing the life cycle of pesticides:

- the placing on the market of new pesticides
- the day-to-day use of pesticides
- the end-of-life (or waste) phase

The whole package voted on and passed during Parliament’s plenary session on 23 October.

For further information:

- PAN Europe: More about pesticides
- HEAL
- European Environmental Bureau (EEB)

Related EPHA articles:

- Protect children from pesticides!
- Maternal-child exposure via the placenta to environmental chemical substances"
- EPHA: Chemicals and Pesticides

Last modified on October 26 2007.

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26 September 2007 20:52, by Stephen L. Tvedten

MEPs emphasize health and environment with pesticide regulation

How to kill pests without killing yourself or the earth......

There are about 50 to 60 million insect species on earth - we have named only about 1 million and there are only about 1 thousand pest species - already over 50% of these thousand pests are already resistant to our volatile, dangerous, synthetic pesticide POISONS. We accidentally lose about 25,000 to 100,000 species of insects, plants and animals every year due to "man’s footprint". But, after poisoning the entire world and contaminating every living thing for over 60 years with these dangerous and ineffective pesticide POISONS we have not even controlled much less eliminated even one pest species and every year we use/misuse more and more pesticide POISONS to try to "keep up"! Even with all of this expensive pollution - we lose more and more crops and lives to these thousand pests every year.

We are losing the war against these thousand pests mainly because we insist on using only synthetic pesticide POISONS and fertilizers There has been a severe "knowledge drought" - a worldwide decline in agricultural R&D, especially in production research and safe, more effective pest control since the advent of synthetic pesticide POISONS and fertilizers. Today we are like lemmings running to the sea insisting that is the "right way". The greatest challenge facing humanity this century is the necessity for us to double our global food production with less land, less water, less nutrients, less science, frequent droughts, more and more contamination and ever-increasing pest damage.

National Poison Prevention Week, March 18-24,2007 was created to highlight the dangers of poisoning and how to prevent it. One study shows that about 70,000 children in the USA were involved in common household pesticide-related (acute) poisonings or exposures in 2004. It is estimated that 300,000 farm workers suffer acute pesticide poisoning each year in the United States - No one is checking chronic contamination.

In order to try to help "stem the tide", I have just finished re-writing my IPM encyclopedia entitled: THE BEST CONTROL II, that contains over 2,800 safe and far more effective alternatives to pesticide POISONS. This latest copyrighted work is about 1,800 pages in length and is now being updated at my new website at http://www.stephentvedten.com/ .

This new website at http://www.stephentvedten.com/ has been basically updated; all we have left to update is Chapter 39 and to renumber the pages. All of these copyrighted items are free for you to read and/or download. There is simply no need to POISON yourself or your family or to have any pest problems.

Stephen L. Tvedten 2530 Hayes Street Marne, Michigan 49435 1-616-677-1261 "An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come." —Victor Hugo

See online : How to kill pests without killing yourself or the earth......

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