Pesticides

In preparation for the Week Without Pesticides, HEAL has launched a guide to pesticide reduction. The toolkit is aimed at community groups and individuals wishing to reduce pesticide use in their communities and local areas. HEAL has drawn on experience of international pesticides and health campaigns to create a 6 step guide packed full of examples and model campaign materials. Download a copy : 6 steps to pesticide reduction - print-friendly Resources (...)

On 1 September 2008 the European Commission took an important step in its efforts to ensure food safety in the European Union, as a regulation revising and simplifying the rules pertaining to pesticide residues entered into force. The new set of rules harmonise the Maximum Residue Levels (MRLs) across Member States, and will ensure food safety for all consumers and make trade and import easier. Before this regulation came into force, there was a high level of confusion across the Union, as (...)

The toxic weedkiller paraquat, produced by Swiss agrochemicals giant Syngenta, has been banned in the EU in 2007 for not meeting health standards. Background The European Commission’s Standing Committee on the Food Chain & Animal Health voted in October 2003 to include the herbicide paraquat in a list of authorised pesticides - despite a fierce lobbying campaign by environment, health groups and trade unions to ban it. On 1 December 2003, the European Commission adopted (...)

Amid failure to reach an agreement in the Council of Agricultural Ministers and fierce lobbying on the part of the pesticide industry: the new EU commissioner for health, Androula Vassiliou showed strong support for the proposed legislation on pesticide approval. Member States failed to find a common position in a meeting of the Council of Agricultural Ministers about new EU legislation on pesticide approval. Most importantly, a compromise could not be reached on thecut-off criteria to ban (...)

The Commission has rejected Parliament demands to extend an existing list of substances banned from use in the production of pesticides. Background On 11 March, the Commission published a revised proposal for a controversial new Regulation governing the EU’s pesticides regime. Its proposal rejects nearly half of the 249 amendments introduced by Parliament during its first reading in October 2007. At the centre of the Commission and Parliament’s disagreement is the question (...)

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 (...)

A new study reveals that some pesticides banned in many EU countries but still being used in Spain, are causing disorders in unborn children. The analysis was developed at San Cecilio University Hospital , in Granada, with 308 women who had given birth to healthy children between 2000 and 2002. The results are alarming: 100% of these pregnant women had at least one pesticide in their placenta, but the average rate amounts to eight different kinds of chemical substances.The most common was (...)

A study led by researchers from Emory University in the United States concludes that an organic diet given to children provides an immediate protective effect against exposures to some pesticides particularly used in agricultural production. Funded by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA), the primary objective was to determine the contribution of daily dietary pesticide intake to the overall pesticide exposure in a group of children in elementary schools. The results (...)

The European Commission has launched an on-line consultation on the revision of the 1991 Directive on Plant Protection Products. The Directive 91/414/EEC establishes a positive list of active substances for the use in plant protection products, which have been evaluated to be safe for humans and which do not present an unacceptable risk to the environment. Only products on this list can be authorised in Member States except where transitional arrangements apply. In 2001, the Commission (...)

Pesticide testing ahead for many state farmworkers. In the first week of December 2003, the US state Department of Labor and Industries is expected to adopt rules requiring blood samples from workers who handle certain pesticides. The rules are aimed at protecting workers from a class of pesticides called organophosphates and carbamates. Both compounds affect the central nervous system by depressing cholinesterase, an enzyme that helps regulate the nervous system. By 2005, the regulation (...)