Experts call for limit on paraquat use

Babies on farms must be safe, summit told

Action should be taken to protect children from herbicide contamination, especially newborn babies living near farm areas, a seminar on the health effects of chemical use in farming was told yesterday.

“Even though there is no study to show the direct impacts of paraquat on babies, laboratory tests on animals show problems with brain development, muscle-working system and nervous system. Thus, it is very important to have measures to limit the risk, including a limitation on herbicide use in the farming sector,” said Pornpimol Kongtip, a health expert at the Department of Occupational Health and Safety.

The department comes under the umbrella of Mahidol University’s faculty of public health. Ms Pornpimol was speaking at the seminar “Paraquat: Herbicide vs Health”, organised by the National Health Commission Office.

Ms Pornpimol conducted the scientific study with pregnant women in farm communities in provinces which have had paraquat exposure.

Studies were conducted on 113 women, 81 of t hem pregnant i n Nakhon Sawan, Amnat Charoen and Kanchanaburi provinces.

Nakhon Sawan and Amnat Charoen are are among the worst 10 provinces for pesticide poisoning cases in the country.

Published and widely reported last year, the study found medium ranges of paraquat residue in the mothers’ blood at 15.1-58.3 nanogrammes per millilitre and babies’ umbilical cords at 7.7-47.6 nanogrammes per millilitre.

It also found that the risk of paraquat concentration in farming areas is six times higher than in non-farming areas. In farming areas, mothers who are in their sixth to ninth month of pregnancy working on farms have a 5.4 times higher risk of contamination than pregnant women who do not work on farms.

The seminar yesterday was held as the national authority is mulling a decision, reportedly to be announced at the end of this month, on whether to impose a ban on the use of paraquat, chlorpyrifos, and to regulate the use of glyphosate.

All these herbicides have been widely used in the agricultural sector across the country.

However, paraquat has been banned in 53 countries, including Vietnam and Laos.

Talk of a ban, however, has received the cold shoulder from some groups of farmers and even state officials.

Chanya Maneechote, a botanist from the Department of Agriculture, said at the same seminar that the authorities should not impose a ban because there is no “credible study” proving its negative impacts on health and the environment.

The Department of Agriculture under the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives have spoken out against a ban, saying policy-makers need to consider more reliable research and that such a ban would increase farm production costs by 40 billion baht annually.

Ms Chanya, however, supported the limited and regulated use of these herbicides.

She suggested a policy to devise a licensing and registration system for the purchase of paraquat.

She criticised reports showing paraquat as “unsafe” and said merit for the ban is unreliable as these studies were conducted by non-government organisations.