Originally published October 3 2005
Royal commission finds link between pesticides and chronic illness
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Though it has not found any conclusive evidence of harm, the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution wants to implement certain safety measures to protect people who live near sprayed areas in the UK.
A variety of illnesses may have been caused by inhaling pesticides sprayed on crops, a Royal Commission said yesterday.
The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution recommended a number of new precautionary measures to safeguard the health of a million people exposed to spray drift, including a five-metre (16ft) unsprayed buffer zone around fields.
However, the commission, which had been asked to report on crop spraying and health by the Government, admitted it had not found conclusive evidence of harm caused by crop spraying.
He said it was difficult to produce a single individual who had definitely been affected by pesticides because most people did not know what they had been sprayed with or at what concentration and their symptoms only became clear some time later.
The most forceful criticisms in the commission's report, however, focused on the way that for decades pesticides have been regularly pronounced safe by government advisers in the Pesticides Safety Directorate on the strength of evidence that was at best equivocal.
The report, Crop Spraying and the Health of Residents and Bystanders, called for residents to be given notice of spraying and for information about what pesticides are being used to be more freely available.
It found that GPs and many hospital specialists had little knowledge of toxicology and called for a better system of advice within the NHS for people who believe their symptoms are the result of crop spraying.
It also called for more research to reduce the uncertainties and to measure the doses likely to be inhaled or ingested by people living near sprayed fields.
Peter Sanguinetti of the Crop Protection Association, said: "As a responsible industry, we will comply with any new requirements the regulator introduces."
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