Date published: 2005/09/23
The BBC says:
The public needs more protection from farming pesticides, a report warns.
The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution report said more research was needed into a possible link between pesticides and ill health.
It recommended in the meantime no-spray zones to reduce potential risk to the public and more information on sprays.
Ministers will study the findings before responding. The Crop Protection Association said it was confident pesticides were safe if used correctly.
Former rural affairs minister Alun Michael called for the report in June 2004 to address growing controversy over whether human health was at risk from the use of agricultural pesticides.
It followed claims from a number of sick people that crop spraying had caused illnesses including nervous disorders, depression and even cancer.
Royal Commission (RCEP) chairman Sir Tom Blundell told BBC Breakfast: "We have a large number of people who live next to arable fields that are sprayed and a number of them, a few hundreds, are ill, and they think they are ill because they've either been sprayed or spray drift has come over their homes.
"The question is how do we link these illnesses to the cause, and is the cause spraying?
"It's very uncertain science, but we feel there is a plausibility that some of those ill [people] are ill because of spraying."
Government policy did not take into account the scientific uncertainty about the effects of the chemicals, the RCEP said.
The code of practice used by farmers should be strengthened so that people living next to fields received advance warning if the area was to be sprayed, it said.
Sir Tom said: "Most farmers are very responsible and most spraying is done by very professional people, but I think we need to have a little bit more statutory regulation so that we know, and everybody knows, that the rules are being followed."
The RCEP recommended five-metre no-spray strips between sprayed land and homes.
Once again the RCEP has come down on the side of the health and safety worriers and control freaks ("statutory regulation" is all about control, after all), with no evidence to support their case at all. (This is the so-called "precautionary principle", where anything you don't like shouldn't be allowed.) It doesn't take a genius to figure out that these chemicals are nasty (they are meant, after all, to kill weeds, etc.). But people are not forced to live next to farms, and the farms were almost certainly there before the houses. If the people in the nearby houses don't like standard farming practise they should move back into cities where they belong.
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