Insecticides and herbicides banned in the EU still causing poisoning in France, warns ANSES
By The New Obs with AFP
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Since 2019, the Labbé law has banned amateur gardeners from using most plant protection products. MAGALI COHEN / HANS LUCAS VIA AFP
Insecticides and herbicides banned in the European Union, sometimes for more than 20 years, are still "regularly a source of poisoning" in France where they may have been stored or imported from countries that still authorize them, a health agency warned on Monday, May 5.
Anses (French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety) analyzed the 599 exposures and poisonings linked to 150 plant protection products, which contained a total of 64 unapproved active substances, recorded by poison control centers across the country between January 1, 2017, and December 31, 2022. Three-quarters of these exposures were accidental, but in the remaining quarter, they "were related to suicidal behavior," the agency said. Thus, of the 55 most serious poisonings, 15 were suicides.
The regions most affected are overseas (Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guyana, Réunion and Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon), Ile-de-France, Hauts-de-France and Normandy.
Kept in stock or imported illegallyThe main products in question are insecticides (60%), herbicides (19%) and mole-killers (5%), sometimes kept in stock after their ban, sometimes imported illegally, the agency specifies in its health vigilance bulletin. Half of these products, those based on dichlorvos (insecticide and acaricide), were purchased in France "from street vendors in markets, in shops or on the internet" , and a third, those based on strychnine (mole-killer) or aldicarb (insecticide, acaricide, pesticide), were purchased while they were still authorized.
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Nearly 80% of dichlorvos exposures involved Sniper 1000, an insecticide used in agriculture in Africa , which was illegally imported into France to control bedbugs and cockroaches. This product was the subject of a specific alert from ANSES in 2023 after a sharp increase in this misuse. Similarly, in French Guiana, residents can still obtain paraquat (a herbicide that has not been authorized since 2007) from Suriname, where it is sold "without legal restrictions," ANSES notes, but the number of exposures fell by 68% over the period 2017-2022, compared to 2012-2016.
Aldicarb, which has not been approved in the EU for more than 16 years, remains the cause of around ten calls to poison control centres each year, particularly in Hauts-de-France, where stocks remain because it has been widely used in potato and sugar beet cultivation.
Since 2019, ANSES points out, the Labbé law has prohibited amateur gardeners from using plant protection products, except for low-risk ones or those authorized in organic farming bearing the EAJ (authorized use in gardens) label.
By The New Obs with AFP
