PESTICIDES

(MS), motor neurone disease (MND) and Parkinson’s disease, but still couldn’t identify the cause. Downs, now 32, puts it more starkly, ‘I was absolutely devastated. I didn’t know what was wrong with me; my body just completely failed me. I had only just turned 18 and kept thinking that this is the time I should be out enjoying myself, but instead, I could see everything slipping away, and there was nothing I could do about it.’

Eureka! On leaving hospital, Downs was determined to fi nd out what had made her so ill. Was it her diet? Was it the cosmetics she was wearing? Was it a virus? For months, she ran through a host of possible causes until, one day, as she was sitting at home looking out of her window, she saw a tractor in the adjoining fi eld spraying something. Suspicions raised, Downs made inquiries, and found that the tractor was spraying a cocktail of poisonous chemicals into the air next to her home. Astonished by this, Downs started down the road that has turned her into the scourge of the agrochemical industry. First, she looked at how pesticides affected humans – and discovered striking similarities between their effects and the symptoms she had been suffering. These

included the blisters, headaches, sore throats, fl u-type fevers and bodily pain. More worryingly, she came across studies showing that many pesticides can cause longer-term damage by attacking the nervous system, promoting cancer and disrupting hormonal systems. For Downs, the obvious next step was to fi nd out what she had been exposed to but, when she asked the farmer, he would not tell her. What’s more, she found she had no right to know: incredibly, farmers are under no legal obligation to tell anyone what chemicals they have used or to provide any prior notifi cation before they spray. Indeed, until January of this year, they were also under no obligation to even keep records of what they had sprayed. To anyone outside farming, this is an astonishing situation. Across Britain, farmers spray around 31,000 tonnes of pesticides a year. All of these compounds are designed to kill some form of life and to do so in extremely low concentrations. Every experience with chemicals of this kind shows the need for caution. In industry, this is a lesson that has been learned through bitter experience of handling toxic substances like mercury, asbestos, lead and carbon disulphide. The historical poisoning of tens of thousands of workers with apparently low levels of such substances means that

modern industry is now more tightly regulated by bodies like the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). Farmers, by contrast, are under no legal requirement to be trained in the use of sprays, and are free to purchase and use whatever chemicals they choose. Once again, Downs makes the absurdity of this situation painfully clear: ‘A farm worker is legally allowed to know what chemicals they are using and their potential health effects, plus they are required to wear protective equipment; yet members of the public, breathing in the very same air, are not.’ Barely pausing to draw breath, she continues, ‘The same double standards apply far more widely. In particular, there is no obligation on farmers to observe a buffer zone around buildings or other areas used by people such as paths and parks. ‘This means that farmers are legally allowed to spray right up to the open window of any occupied premises, whether it be a house, a school, a home for the elderly or any offi ce or workplace. There are literally hundreds of thousands of places around Britain where farmland directly adjoins such establishments. One report puts the number of premises at half a million. If the fi gure were expanded to include all those homes, businesses and schools near enough to farmland simply

052 THE ECOLOGIST