Pesticides

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 of whether or (...)

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 (...)

EPHA and HEAL (Health and Environment Alliance) have sent letters to Members of the European Parliament advocating for a better protection of vulnerable groups, especially children, against hazardous effects of pesticides.
MEPS from the Agriculture, ITRE and IMCO committees were asked to vote on an opinion on a regulation on the placing of plant protection products on the market as well as a Directive and a Thematic Strategy for the Sustainable Use of Pesticides.
The Health & Environment (...)

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 (...)

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 (...)

Several environmental NGOs and trade unions have expressed their dissapointment with EU’s failure to ban dangerous pesticide ’paraquat’.
The EU failed late on Friday 3 October to ban Paraquat, one of the most dangerous and controversial herbicides in the world.
The EU Commission’s Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health did not exclude paraquat from the list of active substances authorised at EU level (Annex 1 of the Pesticides Authorisation Directive 91/414).
Paraquat use (...)

Pesticide levels in fruit and vegetables across the EU remain constant.
The European Commission annual survey published on 22 April 2003 notes that 59 % of samples have no detectable residue, but 37 % contained traces of pesticides at or below the Maximum Residue Level (MRL) and 3.7 % exceeded the MRL. However, one trend causes concern, 18 % of the samples showed more than one pesticide present. This is an increase from previous years. The products tested were apples, grapes, tomatoes, (...)

On 27 March 2003, the European Parliament voted on the Van Brempt report on the Commission’s Communication ’Towards a thematic strategy on the sustainable use of pesticides’.
But at the Plenary, MEPs failed to adopt requests of the Environment Committee, which were also NGO/EPHA demands, for an overall and indicative target for Member States of a 50% reduction of the treatment frequency in 10 years and an EU regulatory framework for taxes and/or levies on pesticides are concerned. MEPs (...)