MORE than one in ten people who are regularly exposed to organophosphate
pesticides will suffer irreversible physical and mental damage, a team of
psychiatrists warns. The investigators, led by Ron Davies of Rydon House acute
psychiatric unit in Taunton, Somerset, say that theirs is the first serious
attempt to estimate the number of people suffering because of chronic low-level
exposure to the pesticides.
鈥淭his is a worryingly high level of illness,鈥� says Davies. The findings by
the researchers, who also treat many of the victims, conflict with the stance of
Britain鈥檚 Health and Safety Executive (HSE), the government agency monitoring
occupational health, which says there is no good evidence to suggest chronic
exposure leads to widespread illness.
Davies and his colleagues at Rydon House and the Wonford House Hospital in
Exeter sent questionnaires to 400 farmers selected at random from a phone book.
Of 179 who replied, 130 reported that they had been exposed to organophosphates,
mostly while dipping sheep. And 21 farmers complained of enough symptoms to be
classed as suffering from organophosphate poisoning, says Davies. Allowing for
bias inherent in the survey method, Davies suggests that around 10 per cent of
farmers exposed to the pesticides suffer from poisoning.
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The researchers also uncovered a consistent pattern of symptoms ranging from
extreme tiredness and speech difficulty to suicidal impulses. Again this
contrasts with the HSE鈥檚 view that there is no clear pattern of symptoms for
pesticide poisoning, making a diagnosis difficult.
Davies believes the real figure for poisoning is much higher, once you
include cancers and heart disease linked to the pesticide. Last year, British
specialists also found evidence of a link between organophosphates and severe
bone abnormalities in eight men
(This Week, 24 May 1997, p 6). One of the
researchers, Anthony Lyons of Queen鈥檚 Medical Centre in Nottingham, says
preliminary results from a larger follow-up study suggest the extent of bone
damage may be worse than they feared.
Last week, Davies told the All Party Group on Organophosphates, a cross-party
group of MPs, that virtually all those who suffer from organophosphate poisoning
complain of becoming 鈥渆xquisitely sensitive鈥� to any further exposure. This is
bad news for any Gulf War veterans sent back to the Middle East. Many scientists
and doctors are convinced that Gulf War Syndrome is at least partly caused by
organophosphate pesticides, which were sprayed in tents and on clothes to
protect troops from biting insects.
A spokesman for Britain鈥檚 Ministry of Defence says there are no immediate
plans to send ground troops to the Gulf. But the US is moving 5000 troops into
the region. Returning troops 鈥渨ould be more vulnerable or predisposed to
poisoning鈥�, says Mohamed Abou-Donia of Duke University in Durham, North
Carolina, who is one of the leading US authorities on organophosphate poisoning.