Pesticide causes birth defects

The Kerala High Court in southern India has imposed a ban on the highly hazardous pesticide endosulfan, already banned in many countries, after growing concern at the risk of farmers and villagers being poisoned. India's pesticide industry is the fourth largest in the world. India is the largest producer of endosulfan, a pesticide that can affect the central nervous system and is dubbed "highly hazardous" by the US agency. The controversy was first brought to light by the Centre for Science and Environment, Delhi, which conducted laboratory analysis of water samples collected two months after spraying of cashew nut crops from the village Padre in Kerala. The analysis showed that the concentration of endosulfan was 7-51 times higher than the maximum limit. In one sample the concentration was 391 times higher than the maximum. On the behalf of India's National Human Rights Commission, the Indian Council of Medical Research last year asked the National Institute of Occupational Health to investigate the pesticide's effects. The institute's report was finalised in March 2002. The report shows that water samples collected by the institute some 10 months after spraying with endosulfan in the village of Padre, Kerala, still showed residues of the pesticide. Although the concentrations of the pesticide were below the US Environmental Protection Agency's recommended maximum, the report warns that detection of even very small endosulfan residues signifies continuous exposure of the population since the spray began more than 20 years back. The National Institute of Occupational Health's study compared the effects of endosulfan in 170 children exposed to the chemical and 92 control children. Compared with the controls, a higher proportion of the exposed children had a low IQ and poor performance at school. It also looked at learning disabilities among 619 exposed children and 416 controls, a tenth of the children (66) exposed to the pesticide had learning disabilities, compared with 3% (11) of the control children. The overall prevalence of congenital abnormalities, such as congenital heart disease and skeletal abnormalities, was also higher among the exposed children. The study did not specifically implicate endosulfan but asked for more detailed studies of factors causing toxicity. Significantly higher prevalence of congenital malformations in the exposed group points to some toxic agent, which in the present study could be endosulfan. The state government had last year banned the use of endosulfan, but under intense pressure from the pesticide industry the ban was lifted in March 2002.