'Reams' of research not disseminated
Elizabeth Sigmund is co-ordinator of the OP Information Network. Here she explains how OPIN has supported hundreds of OP sufferers in their fight for help and recognition and reveals how reams of research about the chemicals have been ignored by the authorities over many years.
I HAVE been involved with a group of scientists - the Working Party on Chemical and Biological Weapons since the mid 1960s. I only learnt of the agricultural use of chemicals related to OP nerve agents in 1975 after reading a monograph from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute entitled Delayed Toxic Effects of Chemical Weapons.
The chapter on OP chemical warfare (CW) agents is relevant: a number of scientific investigations have been carried out on OP CW agents, but also on industrially important OPs, mainly pesticides, solvents etc. All these OP compounds are structurally and functionally closely related to each other. It includes details of damage caused by exposure to OP compounds, such as lesions of the neurological system, with possible teratogenic, mutagenic, carcinogenic, hepatoxic and hematotoxic symptoms.
There followed references to a paper by Gershon and Shaw of 1961, published in The Lancet entitled Psychiatric Sequelae of Chronic Exposure to OP Insecticides. The following symptoms were some of those experienced by a group of farmers and greenhouse technicians, occupationally exposed to OP insecticides: giddiness, tinnitus, tremor, paralysis, polyneuritis, speech difficulties, lassitude, difficulty of recall, short term memory loss, confusion etc. The most common conditions reported to us are depression, exhaustion, short term memory loss and confusion, plus language deficits, both written and spoken.
The Lancet reports that these insecticides activated a tendency towards depression. Because doctors had no knowledge of the reported effects of OP exposure the patients were - and in many cases still are - regarded as hypochondriacs or mental patients who are treated with anti-depressants, often causing severe side effects as some lower the level of cholinesterase, the main enzyme damaged by OPs.
Paul Tyler, now MP for North Cornwall, a number of HSE officers and several scientists including Dr Peter Sims, who was Medical Officer of Health for North Devon, met in Plymouth in 1989. We discussed Dr Sims' concerns about reports from GPs in his area of curiously similar and inexplicable symptoms being reported to them by sheep farmers at certain times of year. It occurred to Dr Sims to set up a help-line for GPs and farmers to call him to report their problems. These calls began to form a pattern and Peter began to suspect some agricultural activity was causing these symptoms.
After several public meetings we were asked to set up the OP Information Network, with modest funding from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. This consisted of setting up a telephone support system, which produced hundreds of calls from agricultural workers and farmers from all over the UK.
We quickly learnt that it was crucial to establish that the case histories had to be based upon proof of genuine OP exposure, primarily exposure to OP sheep dip with a small sub-set of cattle farmers using OP warble-fly treatment. This was easy because there had been parliamentary legislation - the sheep scab order of 1976 - and obligatory use in certain areas of warblecides. We collected information from a growing number of sources, and disseminated this via a free newsletter sent to all on our database, and to a growing group of doctors, scientists journalists and politicians.
Since then we have been asked twice to give evidence to the Veterinary Products Committee and to a number of government funded surveys.
Over those early years we discovered various scientific documents - such as Professor Zuckerman's report of his specialist scientific committee Toxic Chemicals in Agriculture 1951, which stated that OP exposure could be lethal, but that the main problem is that it can cause chronic damage. It recommended that doctors in areas where OPs were to be used should have full and accurate information about the effects of OPs, that weekly medical examinations should be carried out, and if symptoms were seen the worker should be removed from all contact with OPs.
How many lives would have been saved, and how much misery avoided if these recommendations had been followed? They were ignored, and to this day most doctors have no knowledge of the existence of this document, although a copy is still in the library of the House of Commons.
A second paper was given to us in 1992 entitled Biological monitoring of workers exposed to organophosphorus pesticides (MS 17). It was first published by the HSE in 1981, and again published in 1987 and 2000. This document was not intended for farmers or doctors, as the Countess of Mar was told in answer to a question in the House of Lords. It describes a detailed list of symptoms of OP poisoning and warns of phenols contained in sheep dips permeating protective clothing, and describes cumulative damage from repeated low level exposure. Again, this information was not available to those who could have prevented deaths and chronic illness. Over the years OPIN has supplied copies of these and other documents to farmers and doctors, who always express amazement that they were never told of their existence.
Also in 1992 we were sent the BMA report on Pesticides, Chemicals and Health, which provided a large amount of well-documented evidence of the utterly disorganised handling of all aspects of use of OPs, both occupational and domestic. It exposed the totally inadequate training of doctors in toxicology and commented on the lamentable lack of serious information and data-gathering in relation to the medical effects of widespread use of pesticides.
The Report of the Chairman of the House of Commons Agriculture Committee (1986) on the effects of pesticides on human health expressed concern that none of the government agencies involved with pesticides seems to have made any serious attempt to gather data on the chronic effects of pesticides on human health in view of the undoubted public concern. We find this lack of epidemiological research quite unsatisfactory.
There is a wealth of detailed criticism of government handling of the subject of pesticides in this BMA report, most of which have still not been addressed in 2003.
How could such a situation have been allowed to develop? How could successive governments and advisory committees have failed to gather and disseminate such information? Are our farmers of so little value that they were obliged in law to use known toxic chemicals, with inadequate personal protective equipment (PPE) and almost total absence of medical knowledge?