French health officials have reported that the recent death of a French winegrower has been linked to the chemicals he and others in the wine industry have used for decades.
The French agricultural public health body said it is not singling out any specific product but suspect’s benzene, often used by farmers as a solvent or thinner for pesticides, as playing a part in the deceased, Yannick Chenet’s, disease. According to the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph, Yannick Chenet, 43, who died of leukemia, is among some 40 farmers in France whose illnesses have now been linked to their profession and the chemicals and pesticides they have sprayed. He had cultivated vineyards and other crops for decades at his farm in Ruffec, in the Poitou-Charentes region of southwestern France. His death has served to highlight the dangers of working on the vineyards.
Farmer Paul Francois, 47, a close friend of Chenet, also suffers from severe health problems being linked to the products he used. In April 2004, he was not wearing a mask when he inadvertently breathed in noxious fumes from his agricultural spraying machine.
He was hospitalised in a coma. Since then his illness has affected his kidneys and nervous system and he has relapsed into comas several times. He has since launched legal action against Monsanto, the company that produced Lasso, the pesticide he breathed in. It was taken off the shelves back in 2007.
More than a quarter of the 220,000 tons of pesticide used in Europe per year is sprayed on to French soil – some 65,000 tons – and a fifth of that amount goes onto French vineyards, despite the fact these only account for five per cent of the country’s total crop surface.
Other farmers have had Parkinson’s disease and other cancers recognised as being linked to the products, and a victims’ association is being set up. The head of France’s main farmer’s union, FNSEA, said there was a “lack of serious statistics on the subject” and that it was setting up an awareness campaign on potential risks.
IUPP, a French group representing 19 companies that market crop protection products in France, said pesticides on the market are “systematically the subject of tests and it is imperative to respect safety precautions on (product) labels”.