OneWorld.net (U.S.)

Everyday a train leaves from Bhatinda town in Punjab for Bikaner in Rajasthan. “It’s full of cancer patients,” says Umendra Dutt, an NGO activist. Their destination is the Acharya Tulsi Regional Cancer Treatment and Research Centre. And the destiny? Death, perhaps.

A study prepared by the Punjab Pollution Control Board says of the 183,243 people — they make up 39,732 families — surveyed, the number of confirmed cancer cases is alarming. It’s 103.2 per 100,000 in Talwandi Sabo compared to 71 per 100,000 in Chamkaur Sahib. The study covered 129 villages at Talwandi Sabo in Bhatinda and Chamkaur Sahib in Roop Nagar.

Significantly, 63.8 per cent of the cropped areas in Talwandi Sabo is “cotton”, while the crop isn’t cultivated at all in Chamkaur Sahib. Cotton farmers use pesticides much more than those who cultivate wheat and rice.

The PPCB assigned several agencies — the School of Public Health, the Public Health Department, the Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research — to conduct an epidemiological study of cancer cases.

The Centre for Science and Environment commissioned its Pollution Monitoring Laboratory cell to follow it up and sent a team to Mahi Nangal, Jajjal and Balloh villages in Bhatinda and Dher in Ropar. The team randomly collected blood samples of 20 people living in these four villages.

The CSE’s Pollution Monitoring Laboratory analysed 14 organochlorine and and as many organophosphorous pesticides by using Gas Chromatograph, a methodology that is followed by the Environmental Protection Agency in the USA.

The result portrays a gruesome picture. Fifteen variants of pesticides, some of which are cocktails of 6-13, were found in 20 blood samples and the total pesticide in average Punjab blood samples amounts to 0.370 mg a litre (mg/l). The CSE also found that a total of 0.1424 mg/l organochlorine pesticides in average samples and a total of 0.2278 mg/l organophosphorous pesticides in average blood samples. What does this imply? Can such a collective contamination weaken their immunity and make them prone to cancer and some other ailments?

The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, a US-based agency, that regularly conducts bio-monitoring programmes in the world (National Report on Human Exposure to the Environmental Chemicals) conducted a comprehensive study. Its chief aim was to determine the “body burden” of chemical fertilisers. Its second report (January 2003) contained analyses of blood and urine levels.

The CSE tested five pesticides of the ones the CDC had studied earlier. And to its horror, the CSE found that the samples found in the Punjab villages had contained much more pesticides residues. For example, lindane residues were 600 times higher than what the CDC reported. And the levels of DDE and DDT found in Punjab were 35 and 188 times higher than the US samples'.

The levels of some persistent organochlorine pesticides are spine-chilling. It’s 15-605 times higher than the CDC found in the blood samples of the farmers in the USA. Which puts a lie to the Indian industry’s persistent claim that use of pesticides in India is much less compared to the USA.

Now the question is: do we have any “acceptable levels”. A CDC report in 2003 said various agencies and organisations were engaged before the “value in blood for pesticides” was recommended. “The UK’s benchmark guidance value, for example, is 35 nanomoles a litre (approximately 1,700 nanogramme/gramme of lipid),” says the report.

The blood samples collected from the villagers in Punjab contained the same lindane, but it’s much higher (about three times). The industry in India claims that the dose is low in new organophosphorous pesticides but conceals the fact that the lower the dose the higher becomes its toxicity.

The CSE study also found low persistent OP monocrotophos in 75 per cent of the blood samples. Another OP chlorpyrifos was found in 85 per cent of the samples. In fact, OPs constituted more than 60 per cent of the total pesticide residues in the samples.

Monocrotophos, not supposed to persist in the body and ideally excreted fast, was found at 0.095 mg/l,, four times higher than the short-term exposure limit for humans set by the World Health Organisation and the Food and Agriculture Organisation.

Several questions crop up, the most crucial being: is there a “safety threshold” limit? If yes, then how do our scientists and regulators compute it? Short-term exposures, we know, lead to acute toxicity. And if it’s persistent, one faces the prospect of chronic toxicity.

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