Pesticides: a health hazard for Europeans ?

euronews (in English)

In Charente-Maritime, France, rising child cancer cases are suspected to be linked to pesticide exposure. Local residents are pushing for stricter national and EU regulations on pesticide use.

Transcript

00:00They are invisible, but we can find traces of them everywhere.

00:05In our food, in the soil, in the plants, in the groundwater,

00:09in the air we breathe and in our organisms.

00:12These are the residues of pesticides.

00:15Europe is one of the largest consumers in the world.

00:19The risks they present for the environment, animal and human health

00:22arouse a lively debate, especially regarding their intensive use in agriculture.

00:28The European Union plans to reduce its use by half in a few years.

00:32It has recently given up, under the pressure of farmers and agrochemical lobbies.

00:37Here is European Stories.

00:43Pesticides are substances used to prevent, control or eliminate harmful organisms.

00:49There are more than a thousand pesticides,

00:52of which the main categories are herbicides, fungicides and insecticides.

00:58Nearly a quarter of the world's pesticide sales are made in the European Union,

01:03an amount estimated at 12 billion euros out of 53 billion euros in 2019.

01:09In absolute terms, Spain, Italy, France and Germany

01:13are the largest European consumers of pesticides due to their vast agricultural area.

01:19The European Union is also the first exporting region.

01:24More than 450 active substances, the chemical ingredients of the pesticides,

01:28are approved in the European Union.

01:31Many others have been withdrawn from the market due to their toxicity.

01:36But we find banned pesticides in European cultures,

01:40due to the use of illegal and counterfeit pesticides and provisional derogation.

01:46These toxic substances are also found in the plates of Europeans

01:50through imports from third-country countries.

01:53Many are produced by European companies,

01:56authorized to export them outside the Union.

02:06I am in the department of Charente-Maritime, in the west of France.

02:10It houses an area of large cereal crops and is highly pesticide-consuming.

02:15Residents of several municipalities in the region have recently raised the alarm

02:19when children with cancer, some of whom have died, multiplied in recent years.

02:34We are here in Saint-Augustin.

02:36It is the municipality on which we had the first questions

02:39about the presence of environmental factors that can aggravate or trigger pathologies on the territory.

02:48We had industry with the presence of an enrobed factory.

02:51We have high-voltage problems and, above all, a lot of culture around the homes.

02:55And this agriculture uses a lot, a lot of pesticides.

03:01A situation that has everything to worry Franck-Renché Girolet.

03:04His 7-year-old son is in remission of a water cancer diagnosed 5 years ago.

03:09This former bus driver, now a member of parliament,

03:12is a member of an association created by river people who, like him,

03:16are fighting to determine the cause of their children's cancer.

03:20Between 2008 and 2020, we had 7 cases of cancer in Saint-Augustin,

03:24on the line of 0 to 24 years old.

03:26And so we have a 4.5 times higher overreaction than the rest of the department.

03:32A few days later...

03:35One of the sources of concern for us was this air quality sensor,

03:38which detected pesticides in 2019-33,

03:40in 2021, 41 pesticides and the record of France of herbicides.

03:44Where this is a source of concern,

03:46is that this sensor is located 20 meters, 30 meters from the school door.

03:50The future of the environment is constituted

03:53following the appearance of an excess of risk of pediatric cancer on Pierini-Saint-Augustin.

03:58After multiplying the demonstrations and challenging the public authorities in vain,

04:03Franck and the other parents of his association threw a stone in the mud last October,

04:08publishing the results of toxicological analysis

04:10made on children from 6 municipalities of the agglomeration.

04:14We decided to finance urine and hair tests on 72 children.

04:17We have 14 molecules of pesticides that have been found in children's urine

04:22and 45 in the hair.

04:24We realize that a certain number of molecules are forbidden,

04:26it does not mean that they are still used by farmers,

04:28but that they are still found in the bodies of our children.

04:31How is it that forbidden cancer molecules are still present

04:34and that we continue to give authorizations to put on the market

04:37products that are still potentially endocrine-disturbing or carcinogenic

04:40without analyzing the cocktail effect between forbidden molecules and authorized molecules?

04:44The authorization to put products on the market depends on the European level in the first place,

04:48and we realize that molecules that are authorized sometimes for 10, 20 or 30 years

04:53could be either probable carcinogens or mutagenic or toxic products.

04:57What we would like is that at the European level,

05:00we set ourselves the goal of releasing pesticides,

05:02of synthesis in the agricultural world,

05:04and that we massively support agriculture.

05:06So we can produce differently, but we have to review the whole system.

05:09I think that the more we move forward in time,

05:11the more we will also have an increase in these four pediatric cancers.

05:14For our son, he is still in remission,

05:16but we will always live with a sword of Damocles above our heads.

05:19I want to say that we are not fighting for him,

05:21we are fighting for those who will come after.

05:22We went through hell, our son went through hell.

05:24It's really hell to see his kid connected to chemicals

05:29and to see all that it implies behind.

05:32Our challenge is to raise awareness among decision-makers,

05:35since we still depend on European and national decisions.

05:38I really don't want anyone to live what we lived with our son,

05:42but sometimes I tell myself that if he had lived it,

05:44I might change the policies they are putting in place.

05:53Can European rules better protect citizens from the toxic effects of pesticides?

05:58I asked the question to the PanEurope network,

06:00which advocates for a Europe without pesticides.

06:02The European legislation on pesticides is indeed one of the best of the world,

06:07but it's not properly implemented.

06:09One example is the Directive on the Sustainable Use of Pesticides,

06:14which puts as a priority to put in place all preventative measures

06:19to avoid the need to use pesticides.

06:22For instance, very simple techniques like crop rotation

06:26or using resistant varieties of crops to be less attractive for pests.

06:31This directive is not implemented by Member States correctly.

06:35The European Commission has to start launching infringement procedures

06:39and being much stricter with Member States.

06:42But beyond that, could Europeans actually do without pesticides?

06:47Yes, of course.

06:48The majority of the use of pesticides is not intended to produce food that we directly eat.

06:53If we would stop subsidizing all these crops that then are exported outside of the EU

06:59and focus EU cap money to what we truly eat,

07:04we could produce everything organically at the same cost as it is now.

07:08But the problem is that our agriculture is completely open to international markets

07:13and all this cap money, which is one third of the EU budget,

07:17is going directly in the pockets of the pesticide industry, the fertilizers

07:22and also to subsidize exports, which is really not feeding citizens.

07:27The European mediator has just denounced the Commission's disrespect

07:31for the three-month deadline set for authorizing dangerous chemical substances.

07:37The delays sometimes take several years,

07:40while companies can continue to spread potentially toxic or carcinogenic substances.

07:47So Brussels can do better.

Category

Transcript

Recommended