‘I was contaminated’: study reveals how hard it is to avoid pesticide exposure | Pesticides

For decades, Khoji Wesselius has noticed the oily smell of pesticides during spraying periods when the wind blows through his small farming village in rural Netherlands.

Now, after volunteering in an experiment to count the number of such substances people are subjected to, Wesselius and his wife have taken a step closer to understanding the consequences of living among fields of chemically treated seed potatoes, sugar beets, wheat, rye and onions.

“We were shocked,” said Wesselius, a retired provincial official, who was exposed to eight different pesticides through his skin, and even more chemicals detected in tests of his blood, urine and stool. “I was contaminated with 11 kinds of pesticides. My wife, who is more strict in her organic diet, had seven kinds of pesticides.”

Regulators closely monitor dietary intake of pesticides when deciding whether they are safe enough for the market, but little attention has been paid to the effects of inhaling them or absorbing them through the skin. Even people who live far from farms are exposed to several different types of pesticides from non-food sources, including banned substances, according to a new study.

“The most surprising thing is that we cannot avoid exposure to pesticides: they are in our direct environment and our study indicates direct contact,” said Paul Scheepers, molecular epidemiologist at Radboud University and co-author of the study. “The real question is how much is used [by the body] and it’s not so easy to answer.

Researchers asked 641 participants in 10 European countries to wear silicone bracelets continuously for a week to detect external exposure to 193 pesticides. In laboratory tests, they detected 173 of the substances tested, with pesticides found in each bracelet and an average of 20 substances for each person participating.

Non-organic farmers had the highest number of pesticides in their bracelets, with a median of 36, followed by organic farmers and people living near farms, like Wesselius and his wife. Consumers living far from farms had the least, with a median of 17 pesticides.

“I asked myself: was it worth knowing all this? said Wesselius, who says some contractors working for farmers near his village don’t seem to take wind direction into account when applying pesticides such as glyphosate and neonicotinoids. “It sticks in my mind. Every time I see a tractor [with a spraying installation] there’s this kind of strange feeling that I’m being poisoned.

Pesticides have helped the world produce more food using less space – dirtying the regions in which they are sprayed while reducing the amount of land that must be used for food – but they have worried doctors who point to a growing body of evidence linking them to disease. The EU last year abandoned a proposed target to halve pesticide use and risks by 2030, after lobbying from farm lobbies and some member states, who argued the reductions were too deep.

Bartosz Wielgomas, director of the toxicology department at the Medical University of Gdańsk, who was not involved in the study, said the results were “of great value” but might even underestimate pesticide exposure. Silicone bracelets do not absorb all substances to the same degree, he explained, and researchers tested less than half of the pesticides authorized in the EU.

“The findings of this study are very significant: pesticides are omnipresent, not only in agricultural areas but also in environments far from crop fields,” he said.

Researchers found that study participants were also exposed to withdrawn pesticides, as well as breakdown products of DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), banned decades ago for health reasons, commonly found in bracelets. They also detected some banned insecticides, such as dieldrin and propoxur.

Although the presence of pesticides in the bracelets does not indicate direct health effects, the authors expressed concern about the number of different types. Researchers have suggested that certain mixtures of different chemicals amplify their effects on the human body beyond what isolated exposure studies reveal.

Wesselius, whose results motivated him to eat more organic foods, said: “It’s not a good thing to know. But it’s even worse to continue this practice.”