• Weeds Can Be Managed Without Chemical Pesticides
  • Learn About Pesticides in Foods
  • SNAP Display at Event
  • Learn to Manage Pests Naturally
  • SNAP Tour of Organic Vegetable Garden
  • Link to SK Organic Resources
  • Learn to Keep Insects Out of your Crops
  • LIving Near Fields Increases Pesticide Exposure
  • Grow a Lush Garden Organically
  • Learn About Colony Collapse Disorder and How to Protect Bees

Human Rights

also see under exposure to pesticidescancer/ links, respiratorynervous system

Pesticides plague Californians of color, new study shows ( Shannon Kelleher, The New Lede, 15 Sept. 2022)     'Ventura County (California) is known for its year-round production of roughly $2 billion worth of fruits and vegetables that feed people throughout the US and more than 70 other countries. Strawberries are the top crop, but workers also produce peppers, tomatoes, blueberries, avocados, and more.   The study found that 17.1 million pounds of pesticides, or an average of 5.7 million pounds per year, were sprayed in Ventura County from 2016 to 2018. The pesticides used included more than 60 types known to be carcinogenic and 74 types linked to endocrine disruption. Another 85 pesticides used in the county were linked to developmental and reproductive toxicity.   Notably, the study found that township sections where people of color were the majority had not just the most pesticide use, but also the most toxic pesticide use. More than half of the population in these areas was Latino or Hispanic. In contrast, areas that were relatively free of pesticides were overwhelmingly white communities.   “The strongest association we have seen between pesticide exposure during pregnancy and effects on children’s brains are with cognition, so like IQ and attention, ADHD,” said Gunier. “We have also looked at respiratory health, like asthma and lung function. For that, we actually see stronger associations with exposure during their childhood.”     As Harari began researching risk factors for advanced thyroid cancer at UCLA, she noticed that a lot of her referrals were coming from Bakersfield in Kern County– one of the top agricultural counties in the U.S. In a recent case-control study using thyroid cancer cases from the California Cancer Registry, Harari and colleagues found that 10 of the 29 pesticides they analyzed were associated with thyroid cancer.'

Paraguay: Failing to prevent contamination violates indigenous people’s right to traditional lands - UN Human Rights Committee   (GENEVA, 13 October 2021)     'The Campo Agua’e indigenous community lives in an area closely surrounded by large commercial farms that use fumigation, a process that utilizes chemical smoke to kill pests, to produce genetically modified soybeans. The fumigation, including the use of banned agrochemicals continuously for more than ten years in the area, had killed indigenous community’ chickens and ducks, affected subsistence crops and fruit trees, impacted hunting, fishing and foraging resources, contaminated the waterways and harmed people’s health.'    Then it goes on to mention lack of government monitoring of spraying and making full reparation including repairing environmental damage.   SNAP  comment: So under human rights, there is a duty to monitor spraying? There are a few Canadian and provincial pesticide inspectors, way too few to monitor much, so Canada also suffers from a lack of monitoring. Depending on which chemicals were fumigated, and what their half life is, it may not be possible to repair environmental contamination for a long time. The ecological damage would be even harder to reverse.

Swiss Government Challenged by United Nations for Human Rights Violations Associated with Pesticide Use and Actions of Pesticide Companies   (Beyond Pesticides, June 28, 2019)'...the UN Special Rapporteur on Toxics, Baskut Tuncak, has now said publicly that pesticide companies’ behavior is “seriously deficient” regarding human rights (especially those of children), and that the Swiss government should act more aggressively to phase out use of these hazardous chemicals.'   'Recently, the pesticide conversation has ratcheted up several notches... globally, due to greater public awareness of the health and environmental threats of pesticide use, more and more research underscoring those threats, and pointedly, the cascade of litigation against Monsanto (now owned by Bayer) for harm to individuals who have used its glyphosate-based products. Public awareness in Switzerland is also mounting in response to global developments, to recent discoveries that small streams in Swiss agricultural areas are heavily polluted with pesticides, and to broadening recognition that pesticides are linked to a plethora of harms to human health, pollinators, water, farmworkers, wildlife, ecosystems and biodiversity, and more. In 2017, a UN report found that human rights are adversely affected by pesticide use: not only has industrialized agriculture not succeeded in “eliminating world hunger”; it has hurt human and environmental health and well-being.'   SNAP Comment: Links to all statements. Excellent article. Also covers several initiatives. In view of all this, why is it still so hard to go to court about damages from pesticides, especially to health?

UN Report Finds that Pesticide Use Negatively Impacts Human Rights (Beyond Pesticides, March 8, 2017) 

International Monsanto Tribunal  The Monsanto Tribunal took place in 2016-2017 in The Hague. Five judges delivered a legal opinion and concluded that Monsanto’s (now, Bayer) activities have a negative impact on basic human rights.