Copping a Spray - New Review - Weekend Edition January 18-19 2003
Despite mounting evidence that agricultural chemicals are poisoning farmers, health authorities refuse to take the problem seriously
Writes: GREG ROBERTS
Aimee Mackay can no longer visit her grandmother on her property on Queensland's darling downs when the pesticide spraying of cotton is underway. "I go into convulsions, I get bad headaches, sometimes I vomit. I just can't cope with it. If they're spraying, I lock my self inside. I dare not go outside". says Mackay, 23.
Don and Lynette Luchet are hoping no one plants cotton this summer near their pony stud outside Dalby. "The smell of the chemicals - it chocks you. You have to have a handkerchief around your mouth" Lynette Luchet says. One of our pony foals just collapsed. But you don't get anywhere when you complain. They accuse you of stirring. There's big dollars in cotton, they don't want to rock the boat".
Dianne Brewer has been so ill when farms near her property are being sprayed that she has been admitted to hospital: "My tissues have swelled up, I have had seizures and paralysis. I get so weak I cannot hold a cup and saucer".
Across the Darling Downs residents are complaining of litany of maladise they blame on agricultural chemical contamination, including lethargy, nausea, and skin rashes. Some refuse to be named because they are trying to sell properties.
And the problems are not confined to the Darling Downs, with one in 12 crop farmers in NWS and Victoria suffering health problems from agricultural chemicals. There's mounting national evidence that poisoning from agricultural chemicals may be a bigger problem than we think. But we don't know because the records aren't there.
Although the Darling Downs in one of Australia's most intensively farmed regions, Jane Hedger, the Director of Queensland Health's Darling Down's public health unit, says she can find no medical cases "With a causational link to pesticides" from 1998 to the present.
Hedger says no figures are kept on chemical poisoning cases admitted to public hospitals. "That would just create statistical nightmares for us," she says.
However, further questioning of health officials in Brisbane reveals that 25 people were admitted to Darling Downs hospitals in the two years to June 2001 because of "accidental poisoning by or {from} exposure to pesticides" - a rate of admission three times the average for hospitals state wide.
And the cases just keep on mounting: Louise Skidmore, a Darling Downs farmer, lost 3000$ when her organically grown Lucerne was contaminated by chemicals sprayed by her local council, which has admitted liability. "It's bloody annoying that you put in so much effort and this happens," says Skidmore.
Digby Cooper, a grazier from St George, had his property quarantined in 1998 when high levels of cotton pesticide and endosulfan were found in his cattle. "There were cowboys in the industry who did not care how they went about spraying", he says.
As the anecdotal evidence grows, doctors specialising in environmental medicine are calling for a national database of chemical poisoning cases to determine the extent of the problem.
For every 1000 farmers out there, probably 80 or more are measurably affected. - MARK DONOHUE, Sydney Doctor.
Mark Donohue, the Sydney doctor, is treating between 50 and 60 people a year from rural NSW, Victoria and Queensland from agricultural chemical poisoning. Despite growing public environmental awareness, Donohue says numbers are not declining. "For every 1000 farmers out there probably 80 or more are measurably affected adversely by chemicals they are using," he says.
Conditions range from severe skin rashes, nausea and loss of concentration to liver damage, bone marrow disorders and cancers such as leukaemia, non-hodgkin's lymphoma and breast cancer. Donohue says health authorities "have not got a clue" of the extent of poisoning. "It's like asthma. Back in the 1960's we were told only 2 per cent of the population had trouble with it. Now we know it is more like 30 per cent."
Ian Brighthope, a Melbourne doctor president of the Australasian college of Nutritional and Environmental medicine, says he consistantly sees patients from rural areas suffering from chemical poisoning who have been missed diagnosed " I saw somebody aged 35 who was diagnosed with senile dementia," Brighthope says.
He claims that many doctors do not undertake the necessary blood tests and fat biopsies to diagnose chemical poisoning, while some work in rural areas do not want to acknowledge the problem. Brighthope says authorities need to act. "We have a databases of cases of food poisoning and drug misuse but not for chemicals, which may be a bigger problem."
Dalby is the main town on the Darling Downs. Sampling by the Queensland Natural resources dept turned up residues of an organophosphate, at Atrazine, of 12ug/L(micrograms per litre) in November 2001 in Dalby's main weir, which supplies drinking water via"Echo-trigger" recommended Internationally for this chemical - the maximum level to avoid adverse environmental effects - is 2ug/L.
The draft report of a recent review of Atrazine by the federal chemical monitoring agency, the national registration authority(NRA), says Atrazine "Should not be detected in drinking water" studies in the Unites States suggest that at even a low levels Atrazine hinders the reproductive ability of frogs.
One darling Downs farmer says test of water samples from his rain tank last year revealed levels of the organochlorine pesticide endosulfan of 18ug/L. The maximum recommended levels in drinking water is Australia is 0.5ug/L.
The farmer says he did not want to be named because, "I have put this place on the market. I have had enough."
The US recommends an echo-trigger for endosulfan of .003ug/L. in sampling water in Gwydir river by the NSW land and water conservation department in 1999-2000, the median level of endosulfan was 0.2ug/I. Across the border in Queensland, near Goondiwindi, it was .01ug/L.
The Natural resources department found traces of an organophosphate herbicide, metolachlor, in the Condamine River in 90 per cent of samples last year - up from 10 per cent in 1993. US environmental protection agency is reviewing uses for the chemical, which it describes as a human carcinogen.
Dr Loschke, The NRA's principal scientist (agricultural chemicals) say s the level of Atrazine found in the Dalby weir is no cause for concern, "although as a matter of principle we would not like to see it in there". He says the NRA is continuing its review of uses for atrazine.
Loschke says uses of endosulfan were restricted as a result of a recnt review, and the National Occupational and Health and Safety Commission is looking at further restrictions. He was not aware that the US is reviewing uses for metolachlor. "Australia does not allow uses for some chemicals which the Amercians cheerfully allow some uses we do".
A Dalby - based environmental group, Eco Watch, describes the cotton industry as the "major environmental offender" in relation to chemical contamination. But Ralph Leutton the policy manager of Cotton Australia, says changes to industry practice in recent years have contained chemical contamination from spray drift. Buffer zones had been established to protect properties neighbouring cotton farms. "We have adopted best-practice management. We can't help accidents occurring, but as an industry we being are being ver responsible in the way we handle chemicals."
He notes that the industry is substantially reducing it's independence on chemicals: 30 per cent of Australian-grown cotton is now genetically modified, with plans to increase this 100 per cent. From a protein toxic to some insects found in soil bacterium scientists isolated a gene which renders cotton resistant to these insects. "The industry is very conscious and very wary about how chemicals should be used," says Luetton.
