|
||||||
 |
||||||
|
Tuesday, February
04, 2003
Killing fields Unknowing farmers in Cambodia are dousing cultivated lands with a lethal cocktail of chemicals, writes DENIS D. GRAY BAREFOOT and without a protective mask or gloves, Seuon Siap pads through her small cauliflower patch, dousing it with a deadly cocktail of pesticides. Her daughter sits among the sprayed, reeking leaves, and two cows munch grass along the edges of the patch. The 50-year-old farmer isn’t sure exactly how her own mix of three pesticides – two of them highly toxic – works because she can’t read the foreign language instructions on the containers. Her village, like so many in Cambodia, seems like a throwback to a bygone age: oxcarts rolling along vividly green rice fields and sugar palms shading clusters of wooden farmhouses on stilts. But Cambodia’s idyllic rural landscape is far from untouched by modern inputs. Pesticides such as mevinphos, dichlorvos and methyl-parathion, which are manufactured by European, American and Asian companies, penetrate into the remotest regions.
These products, many banned in their countries of origin and identified as highly hazardous by the World Health Organisation, are being smuggled wholesale across the country’s porous borders. Activists say multinational corporations and smaller operators have made Cambodia a dumping ground for dangerous pest killers, a charge denied by at least one leading manufacturer, the German firm Bayer. The pesticide business has boomed in recent years. The Cambodian Center for Study and Development in Agriculture, or CEDAC, recently catalogued at least 418 pesticide products on the market, 142 of which are legally banned or restricted in the country. Among these, fake and adulterated products abound. CEDAC, a non-governmental organisation, estimates sales could be as high as US$20mil (RM76mil) a year – double the national government’s budget for agriculture. Cambodia isn’t alone. The WHO says developing countries spend US$3bil (RM11.4bil) a year on pesticides, about one third of which don’t meet internationally accepted standards. It also reports three million acute pesticide poisonings each year and 220,000 deaths, 99% of them in developing countries. Long-term effects of exposure to pesticides, by handlers and consumers, are believed to include damage to brain nerves, infertility, genetic mutations and cancer. “Cambodia is one of the worst cases. They’re quite vulnerable to the pesticide option without knowing what they are doing,” says Michael Shanahan of the London-based non-governmental organisation Environmental Justice Foundation. A generation of agricultural workers who could have guided farmers in proper pesticide use was wiped out during the Khmer Rouge terror of the mid-1970s, and the government remains weak, poor and plagued by corruption.
At the main market of Siem Reap, a major northwestern hub 225km from the capital, Phnom Penh, pesticide dealer Vo Leak points to her five best-selling products. All are on the WHO’s most dangerous list, four are banned in Cambodia and all have been smuggled from either Thailand or Vietnam. Almost none of her wares have instructions in Cambodian. “I don’t know whether they’re illegal or not, but they must be legal because they’re imported,” she says, adding that no government inspector has ever been around to her stall. A few kilometers away at Khnachas, Hun Hoeun believes her unborn baby died from pesticides – she was spraying through her pregnancy – and she regularly suffers the symptoms of pesticide poisoning, including vomiting, dizziness and headaches. “We don’t want to use pesticides,” says the mother of nine children. “But we (have) no alternatives. We are farmers. We have no other jobs.” The alternatives being introduced, like integrated pest management and organic farming, reach only a small fraction of Cambodia’s farmers, who grow mainly for the Cambodian market or their own consumption. In Hun Hoeun’s village, some 80% of the more than 200 families apply pest killers, mostly on vegetables, and it is the women who do the spraying while men work in the rice fields or in the towns. Hun Hoeun says the women learn about pesticides by trial and error and from the sellers. CEDAC interviews with 77 traders in the Khnachas region showed that only eight could read the product labels in foreign languages and just one had received training in pesticide use. Thus, farmers concoct their own chemical brews, sometimes mixing a dozen or more pesticides with hopes of maximising potency and eradicating pests that have become resistant to repeated spraying of one formula. Few farmers use boots, gloves and masks because of the cost and heat, and most don’t change their clothes after spraying, says the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Pesticide containers are strewn around fields and houses, often near cooking areas and within reach of children. Researchers say that beside harming farmers and consumers, the pesticide deluge is beginning to degrade such ecosystems as the Tonle Sap, South-East Asia’s largest lake and a crucial source of protein for Cambodians. The lake harbours some 500 fish species and a rich bird life. At Sro Maul Thom village, farmers say they abandoned mung bean cultivation because of the cost and health hazards of pesticides. But pest eradicators, which wash into the lake, continue to be used. Soth Dam, a 43-year-old farmer, says he sprays Folidol on his watermelons, describing it as “only medium dangerous.” In fact, Folidol, a brand name for methyl-parathion, is classified as 1A – extremely hazardous – and has been banned in Cambodia since 1998. Produced by Bayer, it remains one of the most popular pesticides – and a major target of consumer activists. Bayer and the Peruvian government face a class action suit arising from the 1999 deaths of 24 school children in a remote Andean village who inadvertently drank milk mixed with Folidol. The government later banned the product, which was labeled in Spanish, a language the illiterate or Quechua-speaking peasants couldn’t read. Russ Dilts, a former FAO official, accuses Bayer of dumping old, cheap and profitable products that are difficult to sell anywhere else and that probably should not have been manufactured in the first place. “We are aware that the product is there, and it is a matter of concern. This would not be a product we would register in Cambodia. First of all, it’s banned, and we know people are not aware of how to use it,” Rolf Dieckmann, who heads Bayer’s South-East Asian operations, said in an interview.
He said Bayer hoped to enter the Cambodian market officially within the next two years once the chaotic regulatory system was reformed. “Cambodia is one of the very few countries worldwide which does not have an effective regulatory or enforcement structure for pesticide in place,” he said. Dieckmann said Bayer could not control the smuggling of its products into Cambodia and that the company would be seen as promoting them if Cambodian language instructions were placed on its cans. “We don’t dump products in underdeveloped countries,” he said. Methyl-parathion, he said, was still legally used in Thailand as well as 30 other countries including the United States and Australia, and was useful in certain carefully controlled situations. But in Cambodia, a combination of ignorance among farmers and poor law enforcement spells grave trouble, said Ngin Chhay, an Agriculture Ministry official. “It is not fair to just blame everything on the small traders for importing the chemicals because they, too, seem to know little about them,” he said. “Major producers must understand the danger they are causing.” – AP
|
||||||
|
Copyright © 1995-2002 Star Publications (Malaysia)
Bhd (Co No 10894-D) |
