Pesticide banned after dozens in France fall ill

France imposed a three-month ban on the pesticide metam sodium, also available in Australia, after dozens of people became ill.

A farmer in southern France sprays chemicals to treat his wheat fields. Picture: AFP

France imposed a three-month ban on a widely-used pesticide, also available in Australia, after dozens of people in the countryside became ill.

Outbreaks of respiratory difficulties, which are believed to be linked to metam sodium, have been reported over the past month in the western Loire region.

The pesticide is applied to the soil around plantations of mache, or lamb’s lettuce, which is heavily produced in the area.

The US Environmental Protection Agency considers metam sodium to be a probable cause of cancer and limits its use to the ground, prohibiting application directly to plants.

In the worst French outbreak, on October 9, the university hospital in the city of Angers treated 61 people suffering symptoms associated with metam sodium and kept 17 of them in overnight.

The national Small Farmers’ Confederation, which campaigns against pesticides, said that market gardeners had long “blackmailed” the authorities over their use of metam sodium.

“They tell them that they will go out of business and have to lay off their workers if the substance is banned,” the organisation said.

Victims were often the family members and neighbours of people who worked at market gardens or greengrocers who are believed to have come into contact with the pesticide, it added.

Campaigners have raised the alarm over the high quantities of pesticides used by French farmers.

Last week the government announced an inquiry into clusters of birth defects among babies born in certain regions over the past decade.

Four babies were born without an arm around the Breton town of Guidel between 2011 and 2013. Three were discovered in Mouzeil near the Atlantic coast between 2007 and 2008 and seven around Druillat near Lyons, in the Rhone-Alpes region, between 2009 and 2014.

Campaigners have accused successive governments of covering up the consequences of pesticides under pressure from the agricultural lobby.

The devastating impact of pesticides on the bee population was demonstrated this week by figures showing that 30 per cent of bees died over four months last northern winter, about the proportion that would normally die over a whole year.

Honey producers have blamed neonicotinoid pesticides, which attack insects’ central nervous systems. French honey production has dropped by two thirds in the past 20 years.

The Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority says on its website it has reviewed metham sodium and, in Australia, metham sodium is mainly used as a soil fumigant. It is a dithiocarbamate pesticide used for the control of weeds, nematodes, symphylids, fungi, soil insects and other soil-borne pests, the authority says.

The Times