Weed out paraquat use to protect farmers and workers

comments     Kevin Tan     Published     Updated

Five international public interest groups have called for the ban on paraquat on the eve of the pesticide producers annual general meeting in Switzerland on April 23.

The Berne Declaration, Foro Emaus, Pesticide Action (PAN) United Kingdom, Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (SSNC) and Penang-based PAN Asia Pacific are calling for the ban of the highly-toxic pesticide, which can be replaced by safer methods of controlling weeds that are now available.

Paraquat is sold under the trade name Gramoxone and produced by Syngenta, the worlds leading pesticide company formed in 2000 with the merger of Novatis Agribusiness and Zeneca Agrochemicals, two giants in the field of crop protection and seeds. Its shareholders are scheduled to meet tomorrow.

According to the interest groups, workers and farmers who are regularly exposed to paraquat experienced serious health problems and even death in some cases because of the lack of antidote.

PAN-AP executive director V Sarojeni said the problems associated with paraquat were not new and plantation workers in Malaysia have complained of poisoning for over two decades.

Symptons of paraquat poisoning include nose bleeds, blurred vision, skin damage, loss of the nails, swollen joints and diarrhoea.

Poisonous legacy

We are taking the occasion of Syngentas annual general meeting on April 23 to strongly appeal to the companys shareholders to end the poisonous legacy it inherited on its establishment in 2000, Sarojeni said.

Help stop the suffering. Stop paraquat! Otherwise you will have to take responsibility for the continued poisoning of agricultural workers and farmers.

Paraquat is a weed killer sold in more than 100 countries and used extensively in banana, cocoa, coffee, cotton, oil palm, pineapple, rubber and sugar cane plantations and small holdings.

A study last month by PAN-AP and Tenaganita, a Malaysian non-governmental organisation specialising in workers rights, found the use of paraquat a cause for concern as the area under oil palm cultivation is expected to rise from 2.7 million hectares in 1998 to 4.3 million hectares in 2020.

Use to increase

The use of paraquat is expected to increase simultaneously, from five million litres (2000) to 7.4 million litres.

In order to deal effectively with these threats of poisoning, paraquat must be banned with immediate effect, Tenaganita president Irene Fernandez said.

Seven European and four developing countries have banned or severely restricted the use of paraquat. Sweden for example has prohibited paraquat use since 1983.

Syngenta has 20,000 employees worldwide with sales amounting to US$6.32 billion last year.



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