IRIN Focus on the effects of pesticides

For years, expired pesticides were dumped at Gao Poudriere, a neighbourhood in Gao, northern Mali, and at a site near the northern village of Tin-essako. Now no human activity is possible in either location. All they have to offer, in fact, is death from pesticide poisoning. Field studies show that a total of 20,000 mt of earth have been contaminated in the two locations. In Gao Poudriere, the dieldrin content per kg of earth is 1,190 milligrammes, according to laboratory tests. Dieldrin is an insecticide the use of which has been restricted because it accumulates in the tissues of animals. The two deposits have been walled in and their soil covered with a film of plastic to prevent any water runoff from contaminating other areas. Annefice, a polluted well near Gao Poudriere, has been closed since 1998. Its water is considered harmful to people and animals, although no epidemiological study has yet been done. A well near Tin-Essako has also been contaminated. "We've been forced to take measures to protect the contaminated areas," says Lassana Traore of the Direction nationale du controle de pollutions et des nuisances, the state anti-pollution department. The Institut du Sahel (INSAH) in Bamako has just released a study on the socio-economic use of pesticides in Mali, Etudes socio-economiques de l'utilisation des pesticides au Mali - Insah 2001. The document shows that some 5,400 mt of pesticides were sold in Mali in 1998. Their combined value amounted to CFA 17 billion (US $23.6 million or 1.1 percent of Mali's gross national product). Agriculture is by far the biggest user of pesticides, especially cotton - which accounts for 72 percent of all pest killers used - cereals and market gardening. "This study found that the use of pesticides has increased and even doubled during the last ten years," one of its co-authors, Mamadou Camara, said. "Even though many structures were created by the government to control their use, we found that they are not well equipped financially to do their job." Nobody can determine the precise impact of pesticides on soils, the environment and water in Mali, according to the director of regulation and control of rural development, Heri Coulibaly. "A wide-ranging study is necessary for future plans because without basic data whatever we do will just be approximations," he said. A study by the Malian Company for the Development of Textiles (CMDT), which controls cotton production, found that 28 percent of wells and boreholes in the main cotton-producing areas in Sikasso and Koutiala were contaminated with pesticide residue way above the internationally accepted norms, and that in 11 percent of cases, surface water that people drank was also polluted. "So it is very important to know that although we cannot go without using pesticides, mainly in agriculture, to increase productivity, the health and ecological effects will be difficult to manage in the future," Camara said. For some years now, CMDT has been experimenting with a method based on staggered reductions in the volume of pesticides used to treat cotton farms, but this method has yet to be spread to all cotton-producing areas. Should pesticides be forbidden? "No," says the permanent secretary of the Sahelian Pesticides Committee, Amadou Diarra. "We don't have to ban them but we should regulate them so they can be better used." For the next two decades, he said, the use of pesticides in agricuture will be unavoidable. Some pesticides such as DDT have been forbidden in farming because of their wide-ranging and long-lasting effects on the soil, but are still being used to fight vectors of some diseases, "so we need to harmonize all these actions to seriously reduce the negative effects of pesticides on health and environment," Diarra said. A major stumbling block is that hundreds of tonnes of forbidden products are smuggled into Mali. "All structures should work together to prevent them entering the country," Coulibaly said, adding that the misuse of some pesticides deprived many farmers of crops this year. Three companies produce pesticides in Mali, but imports far outweigh local production. Imported pesticides went from 1,800 mt in 1991 to 4.100 mt in 1999, the study found. The indirect cost of pesticide use each year has been estimated at about CFA 3 billion (just under US $4.2 million). Some 30 to 210 people die every year from pesticide poisoning while hundreds of others are hospitalised or suffer at home in rural areas. Small wonder then, that some people have asked the government to levy heavy taxes on pesticides to discourage their importation. "This is not a good idea," said a CMDT official said "The problem is just not only sanitary or ecological. It is also and mainly socio-economical." He said if heavy taxes were levied on pesticides this would have an impact on cotton production. CMDT employs thousands of people and if its factories were to be closed due to a lack of cotton, the socio-economic consequences would be very high, the official said. But for Ramata Samake of ASCOMA, a consumers' association, any activity whose end purpose is not human welfare should be questioned. Camara, for his part, feels environment-friendly pest fighters could be the answer. "We frankly recommend investment in the use of bio-ecological pesticides," he said. "They combat agents with almost no negative effects on environment. Though they are expensive we have to choose between that and destroying our health and environment."