OP defences under attack
OP defences under attack
By Robert Davies Wales correspondent
A SENIOR occupational health and safety practitioner has derided the defences used by organophosphate compound manufacturers since the 1930s.
Speaking at an OP poisoning conference in Powys, Andrew Watterson, of the Occupational and Environmental Health Research Group at Stirling University, said makers were ever ready to explain why OPs were, and always had been, safe to use in agriculture.
At the event, organised by the Institute of Rural Health, Prof Watterson said responses began with outright denials of the health risks. But when the dangers were admitted in the 1980s the blame switched to workers who did not read the labels or did not understand or follow instructions.
"In the 1990s they said that if they were guilty they could go out of business. But they claimed there was no alternative and that sheep would suffer if OPs could not be used.
"Other defences included claims that that bans would breach World Trade Organisation rules and resulting hide damage would stop leather production."
Farm workers depended on accurate information from chemical product manufacturers and on safety regulations, said Prof Watterson. There should be much more transparency. If cultural attitudes to health and safety meant a compound could not be used safely on a farm it should not be made available.
Sarah Myhill, a GP who has written an information pack for sufferers of OP poisoning, warned that most family doctors were not trained to look for poisoning as a cause of disease. Blood tests would show up nothing abnormal.
"The next step may be referral to a neurologist who will again trot out the party line that chronic OP poisoning does not exist. The next port of call is usually the psychiatrists, who do not have a toxicological diagnostic pigeon hole and will squeeze you into the nearest fit – chronic depression."
But prescribed anti-depressants made the sufferer worse and patients who refused to take them would be discharged.
"The lack of street credibility and help from government agencies make this illness a social and financial disaster area," she said. *
Conference delegates listened in stunned silence as a farmers wife told how the effects of OP dips devastated her family.
Teresa Layton, of Llwyngwilliam Farm, Clyro, Powys, said her husband Dave was now disabled and confined to a wheelchair. And 22-year-old Joe – the second of her three sons – suffered severe joint pain and could do very little without becoming exhausted.
Her eldest son Ed had also shown flu-like symptoms and extreme lethargy and she developed nausea and headaches after helping with dipping.
"While it was compulsory to dip sheep we used compounds containing organophosphates. Nobody ever told us how dangerous they were," said Mrs Layton, who chairs the OP Users Support charity.
"When Dave visited a GP, a urologist and a neurologist he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Nobody asked about chemicals used on the farm."
The same was true when Ed and then Joe became ill.
"It was so hard to get doctors to recognise how ill he was, and again nobody questioned if there could be a link to the farm. We felt misunderstood. I often felt humiliated and I was treated like an over-protective mother."