“If everyone gets sick and dies of various ailments, who will eat it all?” Aizilniece explains why the use of pesticides in agriculture should be limited

In the TV24 program “Press Club”, discussing the use of pesticides in agriculture, Ilze Aizsilniece, president of the Latvian Association of Doctors, emphasized that this issue “needs to be sorted out and we need to think about how much we use pesticides”.

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“In Latvia, the use of pesticides in agriculture has been increasing in recent years. Of course, we can say that there are bad years, insects and so on, but we also have to think about the health of the population,” said Aizsilniece, referring to a large-scale study two years ago on the use of pesticides in Latvia. The results of the study revealed that even in houses located 250 m away from these te fields, “pesticides are found in house dust throughout the year”.

“Absolutely all carpets, children’s belongings, there are those pesticides everywhere. So we have to think… OK, those fields will grow, but if everyone gets sick and dies from various ailments, who will eat it all? There has to be such a balance here. Of course, we are more representative of people’s health interests and everything else. Clearly, pesticides have a nasty oncogenic effect. Pesticide use is associated with many autoimmune diseases, not to mention acute pesticide poisoning. A fairly significant number of people die in the world every year, but in Latvia we don’t really talk about acute pesticide poisoning,” Aizsilniece, president of the Latvian Doctors Association, justified her position in the discussion of the TV24 program “Press Club”.

In addition, Aizsilniece drew attention to the fact that pesticides are not allowed to be used in agriculture in the European Union (EU), while “pesticides” produced in the EU are sold to third world countries.

“Here is the question, what is the distance from that spraying place to the border of the other land, where maybe there is an organic farm. And they must be more than 25 meters according to various studies. Many organic farmers talk and tell a lot about it, while the Ministry of Agriculture and many others say that it is impossible, their productivity will drop, and what will they do now… But now in Latvia it happens that we subsidize farmers, but they buy pesticides for those subsidies. Rather, that subsidy is to be paid for the piece of land that they cannot use to their full capacity, because they cannot use pesticides there, then it will not grow as well in that area. Well, then, we also subsidized the places where it does not grow so well,” advised Aizsilniece, president of the Latvian Association of Doctors.

It has already been announced that the Latvian Association of Physicians (LAA) calls for limiting the use of pesticides in agriculture, LETA reported on April 23. LĀB has submitted a letter to the Environment, Climate and Energy Subcommittee of the National Economy, Agrarian, Environmental and Regional Policy Commission of the Saeima, which points out the impact of pesticides on human health in the long term, that is, not only for existing but also for future generations.

The representatives of the association note that farmers who plan to use pesticides, herbicides, insecticides and fungicides should inform the residents living near the agricultural lands in writing, as well as through the official information websites of the relevant municipality, at least one week before the planned use of the product. The information to be notified should include information about the day, time and which plant protection product is planned to be used. The use of pesticides in populated areas is not permissible, emphasizes LĀB.

The association has also sent a letter to the Social and Labor Affairs Commission of the Saeima, the Ministry of Health (MoH), the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) and the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development (VARAM).

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