PESTICIDE MISUSE: AN EMERGING POISON TO BREAST MILK AND PROVEN THREAT TO POTENCY

PESTICIDE MISUSE: AN EMERGING POISON TO BREAST MILK AND PROVEN THREAT TO POTENCY

Edward Adeti’s Report, Upper East, Ghana

  A campaign launched in Ghana's Upper East Region to highlight and check the dangers of agrochemical misapplication has revealed with well-observed evidence that exposure of women to pesticides via indirect consumption will not only endanger babies by poisoning their mothers’ breast milk but could also deny their fathers of producing more babies by rendering them impotent with time.

Speaker after speaker at the launch grieved over the harm that misuse and mishandling of agrochemicals had continued to bring upon humankind and the environment globally. It is estimated by the World Health Organisation (WHO) that 1.5 million cases of pesticide poisoning that occur every year result in 20,000 fatalities in developing countries; but experts at the launch said the figure was gross underestimation. Shockingly, over 40 billion dollars is spent every year globally in the pesticide trade that rather has been responsible for an alarming number of deaths, poisoning cases, birth defects and environmental pollutions among other tragedies.

Between July and October 2010, a total of 15 people died with several others seriously injured in separate households in three districts of the Upper East Region, namely Garu-Tempane, Bawku West and Talensi-Nabdam, after eating what preliminary investigations by the Ghana Health Service (GHS) and forensic laboratory investigations by the Standard Board later confirmed to be “endosulfan”, an organo-chlorine pesticide used mainly for agricultural purposes. Out of the seventy-seven cases that were reported in Bawku West and Garu-Tempane alone between October and December 2010, twenty-two deaths were recorded.

Dr. John Koku Awoonor-Williams, Upper East Regional Director of Health, made it known that crops could carry highly toxic chemical residues owing to the failure of most farmers to control pests only based on the instructions of the pesticide manufacturers. He said besides death, chronic respiratory symptoms, body itching, distended abdomen, respiratory track illness, chest and throat diseases and frequent diarrhoea that the unsuspecting public could suffer through misapplication of agrochemicals, cancer was another price to pay for long-term exposure to agrochemicals.

The Director observed: “The Upper East Region uses large quantities of pesticides and fertilisers. There is very little control on their use creating widespread problems of unregulated importation, distribution, marketing, utilisation and very poor enforcement. Supply and distribution is mainly in the hands of untrained, uninformed, unauthorised and sometimes fraudulent distributors who can best be described as opportunists.”     

Dr. Awoonor-Williams prescribed an intense dose of public awareness and education on the emerging menace and also called for community-based vigilance and proper regulation and inspection of licences and certificates of all dealers and salesmen of chemicals. Whilst urging the general public to expose those who deliberately misapplied agrochemicals and advising farmers to take precautionary measures in the course of using and storing agrochemicals, he also paused to ask: “If the advanced countries have used agrochemicals and have realised their health implications and are abandoning them, why are we eager to embrace them?”

The campaign which is being spearheaded in the region by the Youth Harvest Foundation Ghana (YHFG) in collaboration with the Presbyterian Agricultural Services (PAS) also saw the Deputy Upper East Regional Minister, Mrs. Lucy Awuni, passionately inviting all and sundry to the fight against misuse of chemicals in the country.

Mrs. Awuni admitted that although there was the Environmental Protection Act of 1994 (act 490) which forbids importation of unregistered pesticides, there was little hope that the Act could be effectively implemented due to the delay being caused by the changing structures in government departments. She called on Parliament to expedite action on the draft legislation of the Act to ensure a better and safe environment.

The Deputy Regional Minister also called on municipal and district assemblies in the region to develop, as part of their medium-term development plans, a coherent plan on the use of alternatives to pesticides in farming activities.  

Mr. Kofi Azumah, Upper East Regional Officer of the Plant Protection and Regulatory Services Department (PPRSD), who described farmers’ use of agrochemicals in the region as “very alarming” disclosed that the region had about 158 registered dealers with the Ghana Agro-Input Dealers Association). Most farmers, he noted, did not know the danger their bodies could suffer for not safeguarding themselves with appropriate protective equipment.

“Some just use any light shirt, no protection for the eye or nose and feet. Others do not also wash their hands and protective clothing immediately after spraying activity but wait until evening when they wash down to go to bed,” he said. Mr. Azumah advocated for continuous training and education of agro-inputs or pesticide dealers, continuous education of farmers, provision of logistics for inspection and monitoring of pesticide dealers and strict enforcement of existing legislation on pesticide distribution and use.   

The Coordinator of the Pesticide Misuse Campaign, Mr. Philip Atiim, also expressed revulsion at the rate at which pesticides were increasingly being sold through informal networks of small distributors and hawkers, many of whom he said had no technical knowledge of pesticide hazards or safe handling.

“Unregistered and dangerous pesticides have found their way into farms and are being used for the cultivation of foods, such as onions, tomatoes and water melons.  When these pesticides are used on vegetables and for grain storage, food is contaminated. The campaign is everybody’s business. We are all at risk,” he lamented. The campaign is sponsored by theChristian Aid of the Great Britain and ICCO of the Netherlands.