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SOURCE: Mongabay for EcoWatch

DATE: May 3, 2019

SNIP: With the ruralist lobby now in control of key sectors of the federal government, Brazil is rapidly approving new pesticides for use, some of which critics say are either unnecessary or excessively toxic. During the first 100 days of the Jair Bolsonaro administration, the Agriculture Ministry authorized the registration of 152 pesticides, putting Brazil on course to authorize more pesticides this year than in any previous year. Brazil is already the world’s largest user of pesticides.

The number of pesticides authorized each year has risen rapidly, from 139 in 2015 under the Dilma Rousseff administration, to 450 in 2018 under the Michel Temer government (see graph). An even higher number is expected to enter the Brazilian market this year, as the Agriculture Ministry considers registration of roughly another 1,300 pesticides. Most of these requests are coming from foreign multinational companies, mainly based in the U.S., Germany and China, which is increasingly becoming an important supplier.

Despite the rapid rise in authorizations, Bolsonaro’s agriculture minister, Tereza Cristina, said “there is no general liberation” of new pesticide registrations. According to her ministry, the products will merely give farmers a greater choice of existing pesticides, and access to new chemicals and there is no reason to be concerned: “The use [of pesticides] is completely safe, provided they are applied as instructed, within a context of good farming practice and with the use of individual protective equipment,” said the government.

Events within Brazil seem to deny the truth of Cristina’s claims. Brazil has a higher per capita consumption of pesticides than any other country in the world — 7.3 liters per year per person — and it is already facing a serious problem with pesticide intoxication.

According to Guilherme Franco Netto, an Environment, Health and Sustainability Specialist at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, one of the world’s top public health research institutions, about 100,000 cases of intoxication are recorded in Brazil each year. According to Alan Tygel, from the Permanent Campaign Against Pesticides and for Life, this figure seriously underestimates the real situation, as many rural workers fail to report pesticide intoxications.

Several of the pesticides authorized this year will be entirely new to Brazil. Some have already been classified by Brazil’s National Health Surveillance Agency as “extremely toxic.” These include: mancozeb, a broad-spectrum fungicide used in agriculture and horticulture; the fungicide fluazinam; and the insecticide chlorpyrifos. In 2018 the Pest Management Regulatory Agency banned the use of mancozeb in Canada, except for foliar use on potatoes, due to “unacceptable risks to human health.” The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) banned the use of chlorpyrifos in 2018 after its use had been associated with development disabilities in children.