Organic farming seen step vs pesticide poisoning

BAGUIO CITY—The Department of Health (DOH) has joined farm groups in promoting organic farming in the Cordillera for a very big reason: Farming households have too easy access to pesticides, which have claimed the lives of farmers, many of them suicides.

Dr. Brigida Claro, a toxicologist and head of medicine of Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center (BGHMC), said doctors had treated in the first half of the year 16 patients for pesticide poisoning, most of whom were suicide attempt cases.

Last year, BGHMC recorded six cases of suicides attributed to pesticide poisoning, Claro said during a June 22 news conference here.

“These pesticides are accessible to residents in vegetable farms. More than 60 percent of the cases of pesticide poisoning [we have documented this year] were intentional. There were those who drank the pesticides with [liquor],” Claro said.

These suicide cases involved men aged 19 or older, she said.

She said patients who survived the suicide attempts had suffered kidney and lung disorders.

Government doctors, nurses and other health workers have flooded commercial farming villages with pamphlets alerting people on the harmful effects of ingesting pesticides.

But many health workers believe they would generate better success by also promoting organic farms, where pesticides have become obsolete, said Dr. Nicolas Gordo, chief of DOH Cordillera’s regional epidemiology and surveillance unit.

He said agencies that have monitored the trend in suicides-by-pesticides have planned a commercial ban on pesticide sale and use in villages where poisoning has occurred, after talks with the Fertilizer and Pesticide Authority.

The FPA also urged pesticide manufacturers to develop less toxic pesticides. Pesticide poisoning has been documented in banana and pineapple plantations in Mindanao.

Gordo said: “The problem can be addressed by using, storing and handling [pesticides] properly. There are farmers, for example, who use their hands in stirring the mixture of chemicals.”

Claro said prolonged exposure to chemicals had also been cited as one of the causes of poisoning.

In a related development, the DOH has issued an advisory on jatropha poisoning after reports said that children had been poisoned after ingesting the biofuel plant’s seeds.

“Jatropha seeds are said to have pleasant taste and these might be mistaken by children for food. The seeds are toxic, please do not eat them,” Gordo said. Desiree Caluza, Inquirer Northern Luzon