Health campaigners say OP report a whitewash
Health campaigners say OP report a whitewash
By Liz Mason
A REPORT into the possible link between ill-health and organo-phosphate-based pesticides has been branded a "whitewash" and a "disgrace" by campaigners opposed to the continuing use of OP chemicals.
While the governments advisory committee on toxicity of chemicals in food (COT) found convincing evidence that acute exposure to high doses of OPs caused long-term nerve damage, it could find no evidence that exposure to low doses of OP chemicals caused ill health.
It concluded, from available research, that prolonged or repeated low-level exposure to OPs did not cause chronic ill-health effects and if such effects had occurred they must be "relatively uncommon".
But Frank Woods, COT chairman, said a substantial amount of the evidence reviewed by the committee was epidemiological, involving studies of groups of workers. One drawback with this research was that workers made ill by low-dose exposure to OPs would be excluded because they were unfit for work.
"There is also the possibility that within the population there is a sub-group who have a particular susceptibility to the toxic effects of these compounds," said Prof Woods. Published studies examined by the committee had failed to explore this possibility.
He said members of OP interest groups, including the OP Information Network and the Pesticide Exposure Group of Sufferers, who believed their health had been damaged by OP exposure, could be among the OP susceptible group. He said a proper study of these interest groups was of prime importance and recommended that the study was carried out as soon as possible.
The COT report noted that reporting schemes set up by the government to monitor poisoning had provided little relevant information. The schemes were not designed to detect long-term consequences of prolonged or repeated low-level exposure, so the COT inquiry was unable to draw any conclusions about delayed or chronic ill health from the data.
This lack of information was described as a "scandal" by Liberal Democrat MP Paul Tyler, who accused the government of pandering to the big chemical companies.
Mr Tylers opinion was echoed by fellow Lib Dem MP Richard Livsey, who said the government had only looked at people who had suffered no ill effects and branded the report a "whitewash" and "almost useless".
Elizabeth Sigmund, of the OP Information Network, said she had been asking since 1993 for her database, containing 740 cases of OP poisoning, to be examined. "Here is a top level scientist telling the government the same thing that we have been saying for years. It is a disgrace," she said. *