RIGHTS-MALAYSIA: Women Bear Brunt of Pesticide Spraying

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Anil Netto

PENANG, Malaysia, Mar 22 2002 (IPS) - In anguish and speaking haltingly, Meenachi, a herbicide sprayer in an oil palm plantation, describes the hazards she regularly faces during her work: “Immediately after spraying, I feel a burning sensation within me.”

Then come the stomach aches, headaches, giddiness, and nausea, she says.

Married with two children, Meenachi has worked in the plantations since she was 14. But her life in the last four months has been nothing less than an ordeal. “The pain in my stomach has become worse and my legs have started to wobble.”

Anti-pesticide campaigners say that Meenachi is just one of some 45,000 pesticide sprayers in Malaysia, mainly women, who are vulnerable to the hazards posed by their constant exposure to pesticides. Palm oil is a major export.

Sprayers usually have little protective clothing, lack training, and have little knowledge of the hazardous effects of the products they use. The main route of exposure is through the skin, and the worst cases of exposure occur during knapsack spraying and actual handling.

These risks are outlined in the results of a two-year study, released here on Thursday, by the Pesticide Action Network Asia (PAN AP), and Tenaganita, a group lobbying for workers’ rights.

The results “confirmed that women plantation workers are being poisoned by àhighly toxic pesticides, especially paraquat,” it said. Paraquat is one of the most widely used herbicides, and holds the largest share of the global herbicide market along with glyphosates.

The in-depth study was conducted among 72 women sprayers in 17 plantations in three states on the peninsula. Their common symptoms noted: fatigue, vomiting, back pains, giddiness and nausea, breathing difficulties, skin disorders, eye irritation, headaches, tight sensations in the chest and burning sensations in the vagina.

The latest study cannot be dismissed as yet another case of anti-pesticide rhetoric. For one, it was carried out in collaboration with the National Poison Control Centre of the Science University of Malaysia. Tests revealed that 69 percent of the 39 women sprayers, whose blood samples were studied, had plasma pseudo-cholinesterase levels below normal.

When blood tests were carried out again after the subjects had abstained from spraying for one month, the plasma levels rose significantly by 38 to 500 percent. That rise confirms “that at the point of the first testing, the sprayers were poisoned by organophosphate and carbanate pesticides,” the report said.

“Ten years ago, Tenaganita and PAN AP undertook (an earlier) study, ‘Victims without Voice’ and many of the problems that the women face now were highlighted even then. Copies of that study were sent to all the relevant government agencies but tragically the situation has not changed very much,” says PAN AP executive director Sarojeni Rengam.

The latest study highlights paraquat poisoning as a serious problem. Thus, in a joint statement Tenaganita and PAN AP vowed to campaign intensively against the pesticide industry, in particular Syngenta, one of the producers of paraquat, for its “irresponsible promotion of hazardous pesticides”.

Syngenta is a global giant in the agribusiness industry with sales of 6.3 billion U.S. dollars. Asked about the hazards of pesticides, Syngenta Malaysia general manager Hiu Woong Choong said the latest findings released this week were “nothing new.” He added: “It is a very old story not based on facts.”

Hiu concedes that “all pesticides are poison and highly toxic”, but that proper use addresses the risks. He pointed out that there are industry guidelines for every employer to make sure that workers are trained on how to handle pesticides.

He also claimed that Syngenta has corporate ‘product stewardship’ teams, complete with medical personnel, to demonstrate to workers how to handle pesticides safely.

As for paraquat, Hiu said that there have been independent studies carried out by reputable international bodies concluding that paraquat, “if used properly according to labelled recommendations, pose no undue risk to the worker”.

The World Health Organisation Recommended Classification of Pesticides by Hazard and Guidelines to Classification 2000-2002 places the active ingredient paraquat in Class 2 – moderately hazardous.

But the PAN AP-Tenaganita report also noted that it was not possible to include the classification of mixtures of pesticides in the usage guidelines: “Very many of these are marketed with varying concentrations of active ingredients.”

When told that many workers were not handling pesticides safely with proper equipment or were ignorant of the risks posed by the pesticides, Hiu replied, “You should blame it on the management and the workers. You cannot blame the product.”

When contacted, a spokesman for the Malaysian Agricultural Producers Association (MAPA) insisted that the major plantation firms provide their workers with personal protective equipment: gloves, goggles, respirators, and dust masks.

“The big estates have safely committees and safety policies,” he said. “They also have a ‘mandor’ (labour supervisor) for field workers who sits on the safety committee and whose job is to check that safety procedures are being followed.”

But he pointed out that he could only speak for the big firms and not for non-MAPA members. “I would say the biggest culprits are the smaller estates who are non members or when the spraying job is contracted out.”

“The problem is that the workers take the short-cut,” he complained. “It is very hard to monitor each worker.”

Elizabeth Thomas, a member of the study’s project team who visited many estates, is scornful of the safety committees set up by the firms. “From my experience with the women, they were not aware of the poisons they are handling,” she said. “The firms say they have the health and safety committees but many of them exist in name only or are not effective.” She said some of those worst affected were the foreign workers.

She criticised safety equipment provided as “not practical’ because of the hot, humid weather in Malaysia that aggravates perspiration. “The goggles get misty, the breathing apparatus makes it difficult to breathe and slows the worker down and she then gets scolded by supervisors.”

The activists are clear: they want a ban on paraquat and other hazardous pesticides. They want pesticides screened for their disruptive effects, especially on the workers’ reproductive system.

They are calling for trained medical professionals who are sensitive to the dangers of pesticide poisoning to treat affected workers, and demand meaningful and effective health and safety committees.