Text written in Basque and translated automatically by Elia without any subsequent editing. SEE ORIGINAL

Almost half of the world’s farmers are poisoned with pesticides every year

A new study suggests that 11,000 people worldwide die each year from pesticide poisoning.

Human pesticide poisoning has been recognized by experts as a public health problem for many years. by 1990, the World Health Organization estimated that one million pesticide poisonings occurred worldwide each year. A study commissioned by the Pesticide Action Network sought to update the numbers.

“About 402-433 million accidental poisonings occur each year.”

a review of scientific publications published during the period 2006-2023 has been carried out, supplemented by mortality data from the World Health Organization. In total, data from 139 countries have been collected and 369,632 cases of intoxication have been detected annually, including 9,182 deaths. With these data, it is estimated that between 402-433 million accidental poisonings occur annually in the world, of which 11,000 are fatal.

The authors estimate that 934 million people in the world live off agriculture, and therefore 46% of farmers suffer from pesticide poisoning each year. The highest number of non-fatal poisonings occurs in South and South-East Asia and West Africa.

“The authors call for immediate action to phase out the use of high-risk pesticides.”

Despite the efforts made in recent years to reduce the use of hazardous pesticides, the study concludes that the use of these substances has continued to increase. in 2023, 3.8 million tons of pesticides were used worldwide, twice as much as in 1990.

Although this is the most robust study to date, the authors note that information on pesticide poisoning is scarce and call for standardized global vigilance protocols to make poisoning data reliable and comparable. In addition, immediate measures have been called for to phase out the use of high-risk pesticides.