What’s the problem with pesticides?
There’s an incident that sticks in my mind in which a farmer in Nallou, Benin, went home to his family one evening in August 2000 having treated his cotton field with the pesticide endosulfan. Before going in, he put his clothes on the roof of his tin house, out of reach of his young children. During the night it rained and the chemicals in his clothes were washed into the family water butt. The next morning all four children drank from the butt and died. Cotton farmers experience everything from rashes and blindness to death. The pesticides they use are believed to cause between 20,000 and 40,000 deaths each year, mostly as a result of accidental poisoning and mostly in rural communities in developing countries. The Pesticides Action Network UK has documented 67 deaths in one cotton-growing region of Benin in a single growing season. Many farmers can’t read the precautions and don’t wear protective clothing. They get completely covered in these chemicals. That’s why we campaign for or
