Kenya: Call to ban harmful pesticides
"Letters: Enforce ban on harmful pesticides urgently"
In an opinion article published in the February 18 edition of the Business Daily and titled “Pesticides ban in Kenya needs urgent assessment’, Eric Kimungunyi, the CEO of Agrochemicals Association of Kenya, makes a rather appalling suggestion that the pesticides proposed to be banned in Kenya are not harmful to humans. This is a complete disregard of the huge volume of evidence available which speaks to the extremely dangerous effects of these pesticides on humans and other living organisms. An expose by Nation Media Group news teams proved that some pesticides used in crop production were among the pollutants slowly sucking the life out of the world's second-largest freshwater body; Lake Victoria. The investigative piece gathered evidence by analysing water samples from the Lake. The evidence gathered found residues of Permethrin and Chlorpyrifos pesticides in the water. Coincidentally, these are among the pesticides proposed to be banned in Kenya...
...[The policy] section of the Agrochemical Association of Kenya’s website, it states that ‘No pesticide can be registered in Kenya without proof that it has already been approved for use in a developed country with a reputable risk assessment regime, such as the European Union (EU) and other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.’ Was any due diligence carried out in regards to these harmful pesticides? What process was followed in their registration? The occurrence of these active ingredients in Lake Victoria is sufficient evidence that our health and environment is at stake. The pesticides proposed to be banned indeed have negative effects not only on aquatic life but our health too. Kenya needs to set its own standards when it comes to pests control. These standards should be more rigorous than the EU ones.