For decades, Khoji Wesselius has noticed the oily scent of pesticides during spraying periods when the wind has blown through his tiny farming village in a rural corner of the Netherlands.
Now, after volunteering in an experiment to count how many such substances people are subjected to, Wesselius and his wife are one step closer to understanding the consequences of living among chemical-sprayed fields of seed potato, sugar beet, wheat, rye and onion.
“We were shocked,” said Wesselius, a retired provincial government worker, who had exposure to eight different pesticides through his skin, with even more chemicals found through tests of his blood, urine and stool. “I was contaminated by 11 sorts of pesticides. My wife, who is more strict in her organic nourishment, had seven sorts of pesticides.”
Regulators closely monitor dietary intake of pesticides when deciding whether they are safe enough for the market, but little attention has been paid to the effects of breathing them in or absorbing them through the skin. According to a new study, even people who live far from farms are exposed to several different types of pesticides from non-dietary sources – including banned substances.
“What’s most surprising is that we cannot avoid exposure to pesticides: they are in our direct environment and our study indicates direct contact,” said Paul Scheepers, a molecular epidemiologist at Radboud University and co-author of the study. “The real question is how much is taken up [by the body] and that’s not so easy to answer.”
The researchers got 641 participants in 10 European countries to wear silicone wristbands continuously for one week to capture external exposure to 193 pesticides. In laboratory tests, they detected 173 of the substances they tested for, with pesticides found in every wristband and an average of 20 substances for every person who took part.
Non-organic farmers had the highest number of pesticides in their wristbands, with a median of 36, followed by organic farmers and people who live near farms, such as Wesselius and his wife. Consumers living far from farms had the fewest, with a median of 17 pesticides.
“I’ve asked myself, was it worth it to know all this?” said Wesselius, who says some contractors for the farmers near his village do not seem to consider the wind direction when applying pesticides such as glyphosate and neonicotinoids. “It’s lingering in the back of my mind. Every time I see a tractor [with a spraying installation] there’s this kind of eerie feeling that I’m being poisoned.”
Pesticides have helped the world produce more food using less space – fouling the regions in which they are sprayed while reducing the area of land that needs to be exploited for food – but have worried doctors who point to a growing body of evidence linking them to disease. The EU scrapped a proposed target last year to halve pesticide use and risk by 2030 after lobbying from agriculture lobbies and some member states, who argued the cuts were too deep.
Bartosz Wielgomas, the head of the toxicology department at the Medical University of Gdańsk, who was not involved in the study, said the results were of “great value” but may even underestimate exposure to pesticides. The silicone wristbands do not absorb all substances to the same degree, he said, and the researchers tested for fewer than half of the pesticides approved in the EU.
“The conclusions of this study are highly significant: pesticides are ubiquitous, not only in agricultural areas but also in environments far from crop fields,” he said.
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The researchers found participants in the study were also exposed to pesticides that have been taken off the market, with breakdown products of DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), which was banned decades ago on health grounds, commonly found in the wristbands. They also detected some banned insecticides, such as dieldrin and propoxur.
While the presence of pesticides in the wristbands does not indicate direct health effects, the authors voiced concern about the number of different types. Researchers have suggested that some mixtures of different chemicals amplify their effects on the human body beyond what studies of isolated exposure find.
Wesselius, whose results have motivated him to eat more organic food, said: “It’s not a nice thing to know. But it’s even worse to continue this practice.”
