throughout the country used about 300 million liters of pesticides per year.
five years ago, some residents of San Justo, Province Santa Fe, went to live in the north of the city for more contact with nature. At the time, they found they could not be with the windows open or use the patio or having plants. The constant spraying prevented it. It was also notable increases in cancers, birth, allergies, respiratory problems and other diseases in the city. There were no recorded health protocol that clearly express medical or linking pesticides to these problems, but hoping to stay away from those tests, the villagers gathered signatures, settled the issue in the community and formed the organization Muyuqui, Quechua word you want say "force that groups and then expand. "
"There are several products used for fumigation, the best known is glyphosate, but many others apply even more harmful to health," says Patricio Acuña, a member of the organization born in San Justo. This city of 30,000 is just a sample of what is happening in hundreds of localities. And displays the visible threat to the health of increasing use of chemicals for making profitable agro-production model.
Advances in crop-mainly soy, genetically modified to resist the action of poisons is key to understanding this problem. According to Ministry of Health of the Nation and the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Food, it is estimated that GM crops currently cover 22 million hectares of the provinces of Buenos Aires, Santa Fe, Cordoba, Entre Rios, Santiago del Estero , San Luis, Chaco, Salta, Jujuy, Tucumán, La Pampa and Corrientes.
If we add to this growing trend toward monoculture, environmental risk is heightened. "The monocultures have expanded throughout Argentina. Is soy, but also exotic forest trees, vegetables, olives, fruit and snuff. Monocultures are unsustainable from its very foundation to recreate conditions not minimum that will allow your support, require the continuous application of pesticides and fertilizers, and every year we need more quantities of these substances to maintain productivity, "says the agronomist Javier Souza Casadinho, regional coordinator of the NGO Rapal (Network Pesticide Action and alternatives in Latin America). According to this organization, now implemented in Argentina for about 300 million liters of pesticides per year, so air, land with self-propelled and towed equipment, and with backpacks.
The increasing use of these substances (15 years ago were used 30 million liters), joins the lack of effective control on their classification, implementation, marketing and storage, threatening people, animals and the environment.
"There are several products used for fumigation, the best known is glyphosate, but many others apply even more harmful to health," says Patricio Acuña, a member of the organization born in San Justo. This city of 30,000 is just a sample of what is happening in hundreds of localities. And displays the visible threat to the health of increasing use of chemicals for making profitable agro-production model.
Advances in crop-mainly soy, genetically modified to resist the action of poisons is key to understanding this problem. According to Ministry of Health of the Nation and the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Food, it is estimated that GM crops currently cover 22 million hectares of the provinces of Buenos Aires, Santa Fe, Cordoba, Entre Rios, Santiago del Estero , San Luis, Chaco, Salta, Jujuy, Tucumán, La Pampa and Corrientes.
If we add to this growing trend toward monoculture, environmental risk is heightened. "The monocultures have expanded throughout Argentina. Is soy, but also exotic forest trees, vegetables, olives, fruit and snuff. Monocultures are unsustainable from its very foundation to recreate conditions not minimum that will allow your support, require the continuous application of pesticides and fertilizers, and every year we need more quantities of these substances to maintain productivity, "says the agronomist Javier Souza Casadinho, regional coordinator of the NGO Rapal (Network Pesticide Action and alternatives in Latin America). According to this organization, now implemented in Argentina for about 300 million liters of pesticides per year, so air, land with self-propelled and towed equipment, and with backpacks.
The increasing use of these substances (15 years ago were used 30 million liters), joins the lack of effective control on their classification, implementation, marketing and storage, threatening people, animals and the environment.
In the office
According to estimates by geographers at the National University of Cordoba, some 12 million people live in villages surrounded by fields subject to systematic fumigation. This data was poured during the month of August when the university was held in the First Mediterranean Peoples Medical fumigated, which included 160 experts from around the country. For several days, they presented studies and evidence linking pesticides with the onset of cancers, congenital malformations, endocrine and reproductive disorders, respiratory diseases and allergies in people and rural workers.
"They delivered the opinion of medical science to a problem that have denounced the past ten years the residents affected by the fumigations. Today nobody can say that the health problems that are casual or experience are the same that any person has, "says pediatrician Vazquez Medardo Avila, one of the organizers of the conclave.
The meeting discussed academically and verified the scientific information generated groups of researchers from several public universities in Argentina (Buenos Aires, Litoral, Rosario and Rio Cuarto). Also reviewed data from the international scientific literature, published in the United States, Europe and Canada, agrees that pesticides cause diseases that doctors are finding people sprayed their patients. "And what we see is only part of what is really happening, because there is from the state look more epidemiological and surveillance," says Avila.
Alejandro Oliva, medical director of the Environmental Unit and Reproductive Health of Hospital Italiano de Rosario, matches under-diagnosis of cases that expressed at the meeting in Cordoba. Typically, data damage to the health of pesticides come to light from partial observations' No national register of health conditions such as cancer, for example, and this complicates research, "says professional.
Between 2004 and 2007, Oliver was part of a team that studied the effects of pesticides and solvents on male reproductive health in six towns of the Pampas. We found excess of the national and Latin American average of testicular cancer and digestive abnormalities, impotence, poor sperm quality and infertility. Oliva
highlights other factors that produce a synergy hazardous to health: a land impacted by pesticides of various types for over four decades, says the recurring lack of protection of those who apply, the presence of silos and storage of poisons within the urban sector of the people, lack of drinking water and livestock in confined spaces, known as feedlots, a technique that moves animals to make room for agriculture.
"The feedlots," says Oliva, accumulate a large amount of chemicals such as pesticides, antibiotics or steroids, used in animal husbandry, and the elements chemical wastes, which accumulate in the first layers of which, in many regions of Argentina, is extracted for drinking water. "
In short, without exempting glyphosate soybean and its responsibilities, the physician considers it essential to a more global view on the risks of the current agro-industrial model. And above all, do not expect clear evidence to act. "To build laws, policy makers want assurances that pesticides are harmful, but the truths are always relative. However, the state has an obligation to make a decision and play, even on the precautionary principle, "the doctor emphasized, referring to the law General Environmental 25,675. This rule provides for our country ten principles of environmental policy, including the precautionary principle, which stipulates that "where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of information or scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing measures measures to prevent environmental degradation. "
Another element that weighs heavily on the issue of agrochemicals is the lack of regulation at national level. Currently, there are only provincial laws. In many cases, these laws is effected locally, were the inhabitants themselves who should move, not without suffering pressures and threats because of the large interests involved in a business worth millions of dollars a year, which many people inside almost exclusively dependent for their livelihood.
The burden of proof
hinge occurred in the city Santa Fe de San Jorge. There, for the first time, the struggle of the neighbors made a judge, Regulus Tristan Martinez, prohibiting the spraying of chemicals at a distance of less than 800 meters and 1,500 land applications for carriers. For the first time, reversing the burden of proof and ordered to demonstrate that pesticides are not harmful to use in the urban area, and not vice versa.
In San Francisco, Córdoba, residents worked in 2005 and 2006 to achieve an ordinance banning aerial spraying in and around the city. "After an intense campaign fraught with difficulties, we get the approval and from that moment and not sprayed in San Francisco," Alicia told Ropolo Action, a resident of the city.
And the list goes: La Leon in the Chaco, in the wake of complaints against a rice that used large amounts of pesticides, recently won the first prohibition of spraying in the province, which provides the greatest distance given in the country: 2,000 meters from downtown to the aerial spraying.
are just some of the places where the settlers took over at the deterioration of health that are detected in their communities since the spraying became commonplace. Following the popular mobilization, various provincial chambers of deputies and deliberative councils of Santa Fe, Cordoba, Buenos Aires and Entre Rios began public hearings and meetings designed to reverse the situation, and emerged a national bill was sent in September Congress of the Nation. In the version involving various actors involved in the issue and sign Members South Project, GEN, SI, and the Front for Victory.
The initiative seeks to ban the aerial spraying and limit land throughout the country. Faced with an impending agricultural season, a decision of State on the use of pesticides can not be expected. And he can not continue to delay a thorough debate on the risks inherent in the current Argentine agro-industrial model.
Cora Giordana
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