Whitewash for Crop Sprays
by Christopher Booker

Around a quarter of a million people in Britain it is estimated, live next to farmland which is sprayed with toxic chemicals. Many experience the kind of damage to their health which is compatible with chemical poisoning, ranging from headaches, abnormal tiredness and memory loss to asthma and cancer. Among them is Georgina Downs, a young singer, who eventually learned to associate the persistent ill health she and her family suffered with spraying of the field adjoining her garden near Chichester, Sussex.

Miss Downs was startled to discover that there is no legal protection for those forcibly exposed to chemical spraydrift in this way. Farmers are under no obligation to warn neighbours when spraying is to take place, nor to reveal what chemicals they use. She therefore launched on a determined campaign which last December brought her together with two ministers, Lord Whitty and Michael Meacher.

As a result, The Pesticides Safety Directive is staging a "consultation exercise" to discover whether the law on crop spraying should be changed. The problem is that all pesticides are licensed as "safe" by the Government. It cannot possibly afford to admit they are harmful, for fear of massive compensation claims.

Sure enough, when the PSD published a list of 758 "consultees", all but a handful were chemical companies or organizations opposed to any new restrictions being placed on the use of toxic chemicals. Repeatedly in its accompanying letter the PSD emphasises that the chemicals are entirely safe. Professor David Coggon, head of the Advisory Committee on Pesticides, has even suggested that those who think they experience adverse symptoms after exposure to chemicals may simply be imagining them, as a result of being told that toxic chemicals might possibly be dangerous.

All the evidence indicates that this "consultation", due to end next month, is yet another cosmetic to cover the real issues of toxic chemicals. On the one hand, the Government must insist that there is no problem; on the other, faced with a campaigner as redoubtable as Georgina Downs, it must go through the motions of showing concern. Anyone who wishes to add to the mounting pile of evidence to the contrary can e-mail her at georgedownes29@yahoo.co.uk
The Sunday Telegraph, 31st August 2003