VOLUNTARY SYSTEMS
Pesticide poisonings likely under-reported
June 17, 2008
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Joanna Smith
OTTAWA BUREAU
OTTAWA–A government-run public database of pesticide-related incidents likely under-represents the number of people who get sick or die after using chemicals to help get rid of bugs or weeds.
The Pest Management Regulatory Agency has been requiring pesticide manufacturers to report any information they receive about health and environmental effects of their products to Health Canada since new federal legislation came into effect on April 26, 2007.
As of yesterday, the online database described 264 incidents involving humans with the nature of severity of symptoms varying widely from red spots on baby girls to four reported deaths. The database, which also reports incidents involving Canada-registered products in the United States, notes that manufacturers submit the information based on reports they received from health professionals and the public, so they do not necessarily establish a direct link with the products.
"Additional scientific investigations are required to validate signals from the database and to establish a cause and effect relationship between a pesticide and an adverse effect," the website states.
But numbers collected elsewhere suggest the database does not give the full picture of suspected incidents.
Last year, the David Suzuki Foundation issued a report estimating that just more than 6,000 Canadians, about 2,800 of them children, suffer from acute pesticide poisoning every year and said Canada lacks a national system for reporting pesticide-related incidents.
At the time, the regulatory agency pointed to its new Canadian Pesticide Incident Reporting Database as part of the solution to the dearth of data available, but report author David Boyd said in a recent interview the numbers don't add up.
"It's a very limited picture," Boyd said of the database. Gideon Forman, executive director of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, said this is because it is left mostly up to the public to report the incidents.
"If your kid is poisoned, it may not be the first thing you think about," he said, adding there has not been a "concerted effort" to encourage doctors to use it either.
"There is awareness about the harmful effects of pesticides but not a huge amount of awareness about the registry," Forman said.
A spokesperson for the regulatory agency said that since a request for an interview came from a national reporter, it required a long approval process that prevented anyone from being available to comment yesterday.
Kathleen Cooper, a senior researcher with the Canadian Environmental Law Association who sits on an advisory council that helps inform the health minister about pesticides, said it might be asking too much to force physicians to report to the agency.
"It sounds kind of lame that the reporting by doctors is voluntary, but it literally has to do with the challenge that doctors have of already having too much paperwork to do," she said, adding it might be better to require poison control centres to share their data, instead.
There is a second, voluntary system meant for the public and health professionals to report incidents directly to Health Canada, but its data is not yet posted online.
In an email Cooper received yesterday, Jean-Pierre Lachaîne, project manager for the incident reporting program, said the agency has so far received only three reports from the public but planned to post them online "in about two or three weeks."
Lachaîne was not immediately available for comment yesterday.
Toronto Star
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