doctors against, it can be bad for your health

PORDENONE – The controversy continues on the territory (and not only) for the request for derogation from the pesticide Chlorpyrifos removed from the market by the European Union and which the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region (but not only) has asked to be able to reuse to eradicate flavescence dorée which is massacring vine plants in different areas of the territory. The Prosecco Consortium had already taken the field asking the members, even in the event that the derogation was granted by the Ministries of Health and Agriculture, to renounce the use of the pesticide. Now it is the association of doctors for the environment, regional section, to raise the alarm. «Chlorpyrifos and chlorpyrifos – methyl are organophosphorus insecticides with a broad spectrum neurotoxic effect (used as nerve gas during the Second World War), they inhibit acetylcholinesterase, a fundamental enzyme for the functioning of the nervous system. Used for a long time on a considerable number of agricultural crops – the environmental doctors explain – their dangerousness due to effects on neurological development and metabolic damage in humans is a fact that has been acquired for many years, based on scientific evidence at various levels and on animals laboratory and epidemiological studies of the exposed population’.

THE MAYORS
«Many of our administrators – attack the environmental doctors of the region, have not yet understood the modern concept of food toxicity and that for these products, which act in infinitesimal quantities, different parameters must be established for the protection of public health. We, doctors and healthcare professionals from Isde, are deeply concerned about the superficiality with which substances that threaten the health of our children are used, in total indifference to the data published by the international scientific society. We have always reiterated that there simply shouldn’t be substances with endocrine disrupting activity in food and drinking water. In order for them not to exist, in addition to avoiding direct exposure during the most vulnerable stages of pregnancy and childhood – they go on – it is necessary to prohibit their use for professional and non-professional use in agriculture and beyond”.

THE DANGER
“Chlorpyrifos is the insecticide molecule that the Fvg region, together with Veneto – conclude the environmental doctors – wants to bring back into use to deal with the resurgence of flavescence dorée, a vine disease caused by a phytoplasma whose transmission is mainly mediated by a buzzer on which the molecule object of the request in derogation acts. It is clear that the use of Chlorpyrifos is not a problem of residues on the grapes and possibly in the wine, but for those who live around the vineyards and those who work in the vineyards, humans and beyond. In addition to the insect, the presence of phytoplasma, or infected plants, is necessary for the disease to spread». Hence the request. «Isde Fvg and doctors from Ambitene ask that the Region withdraw the request for derogation from the use of chlorpyrifos and, instead, structure and finance an effective system for monitoring and managing the pathology at a territorial level and, at the same time, invest in training of the operators”.

IN THE REGION
To present a question the councilor Marco Putto of the Civica Fvg. «Following repeated clinical trials on laboratory animals and proven epidemiological studies on the exposed population, the scientific community has established the dangerousness of Chlorpyrifos. In view of all this – asks Putto – does the Region have scientific evidence for which it deems it reasonable that chlorpyrifos and chlorpyrifos-methyl are not harmful to human health? Finally, don’t you think that the use of this pesticide could be contraindicated, as well as for health reasons, also for image damage to the same categories of winemakers that you would like to protect?»

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in Il Gazzettino