Global Network Releases Updated List of Highly Hazardous Pesticides

News in the Framework of the European Business & Biodiversity Campaign

 

Global Network Releases Updated List of Highly Hazardous Pesticides

Pesticide Action Network (PAN) International released an updated version of its List of Highly Hazardous Pesticides (HHPs) to coincide with a key meeting in Stockholm of the Strategic Approach for International Chemicals Management (SAICM) process. The expanded list now includes 306 chemicals.

Among the nine newly listed pesticides in the updated version of the HHP list are carbetamide for being classified as a presumed human reproductive toxicant according to the EU, cyanamide for its hormone disrupting properties and emamectin benzoate for its threat to the environment and bees.

Following the addition of a new criterion, the list now includes pesticides which are recognised by the UN Rotterdam Convention as meeting the Convention’s criteria for global trade restrictions. These pesticides have however not yet been officially listed in the Rotterdam Convention for political reasons.

Pesticides are the only toxic chemicals that are intentionally released into the environment. Today pesticides contaminate every environmental medium even in locations remote from their use. Susan Haffmans of PAN Germany says "These pesticides are having a devastating effect on biodiversity, including on beneficial insects. They are undermining the sustainability of food production systems and harm an unknown number of farmers, workers, children and animals every year."

Keith Tyrell from PAN UK adds "Though pesticides have been recognized as a global threat to health, development and the environment, and despite a variety of pesticide Conventions and agreements, global governance of pesticides is weak, leaving large gaps in overall management."

PAN Asia Pacific’s Sarojeni Rengam says "The Sustainable Development Goals, in particular to end hunger, achieve food security and promote sustainable agriculture; to ensure healthy lives and to halt and reverse land degradation and biodiversity loss cannot be achieved until the widespread use of HHPs is replaced by agroecological practices".

The PAN HHP list includes pesticides with high levels of acute or chronic hazards to health or environment according to internationally accepted classification systems. With the HHP list, PAN provides authorities, cultivation organisations, advisers, farmers and other interested parties with a tool to identify highly dangerous pesticides and then to replace them with safer and more sustainable alternatives.
For the PAN HHP list, visit http://www.pan-germany.org/download/PAN_HHP_List.pdf

Source: pan-international.org/release/
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