In Charente-Maritime, France, rising child cancer cases are suspected to be linked to pesticide exposure. Local residents are pushing for stricter national and EU regulations on pesticide use.
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00:00They are invisible, but we can find traces of them everywhere.
00:05In our food, in the soil, in the plants, in the groundwater,
00:09in the air we breathe and in our organisms.
00:12These are the residues of pesticides.
00:15Europe is one of the largest consumers in the world.
00:19The risks they present for the environment, animal and human health
00:22arouse a lively debate, especially regarding their intensive use in agriculture.
00:28The European Union plans to reduce its use by half in a few years.
00:32It has recently given up, under the pressure of farmers and agrochemical lobbies.
00:37Here is European Stories.
00:43Pesticides are substances used to prevent, control or eliminate harmful organisms.
00:49There are more than a thousand pesticides,
00:52of which the main categories are herbicides, fungicides and insecticides.
00:58Nearly a quarter of the world's pesticide sales are made in the European Union,
01:03an amount estimated at 12 billion euros out of 53 billion euros in 2019.
01:09In absolute terms, Spain, Italy, France and Germany
01:13are the largest European consumers of pesticides due to their vast agricultural area.
01:19The European Union is also the first exporting region.
01:24More than 450 active substances, the chemical ingredients of the pesticides,
01:28are approved in the European Union.
01:31Many others have been withdrawn from the market due to their toxicity.
01:36But we find banned pesticides in European cultures,
01:40due to the use of illegal and counterfeit pesticides and provisional derogation.
01:46These toxic substances are also found in the plates of Europeans
01:50through imports from third-country countries.
01:53Many are produced by European companies,
01:56authorized to export them outside the Union.
02:06I am in the department of Charente-Maritime, in the west of France.
02:10It houses an area of large cereal crops and is highly pesticide-consuming.
02:15Residents of several municipalities in the region have recently raised the alarm
02:19when children with cancer, some of whom have died, multiplied in recent years.
02:34We are here in Saint-Augustin.
02:36It is the municipality on which we had the first questions
02:39about the presence of environmental factors that can aggravate or trigger pathologies on the territory.
02:48We had industry with the presence of an enrobed factory.
02:51We have high-voltage problems and, above all, a lot of culture around the homes.
02:55And this agriculture uses a lot, a lot of pesticides.
03:01A situation that has everything to worry Franck-Renché Girolet.
03:04His 7-year-old son is in remission of a water cancer diagnosed 5 years ago.
03:09This former bus driver, now a member of parliament,
03:12is a member of an association created by river people who, like him,
03:16are fighting to determine the cause of their children's cancer.
03:20Between 2008 and 2020, we had 7 cases of cancer in Saint-Augustin,
03:24on the line of 0 to 24 years old.
03:26And so we have a 4.5 times higher overreaction than the rest of the department.
03:32A few days later...
03:35One of the sources of concern for us was this air quality sensor,
03:38which detected pesticides in 2019-33,
03:40in 2021, 41 pesticides and the record of France of herbicides.
03:44Where this is a source of concern,
03:46is that this sensor is located 20 meters, 30 meters from the school door.
03:50The future of the environment is constituted
03:53following the appearance of an excess of risk of pediatric cancer on Pierini-Saint-Augustin.
03:58After multiplying the demonstrations and challenging the public authorities in vain,
04:03Franck and the other parents of his association threw a stone in the mud last October,
04:08publishing the results of toxicological analysis
04:10made on children from 6 municipalities of the agglomeration.
04:14We decided to finance urine and hair tests on 72 children.
04:17We have 14 molecules of pesticides that have been found in children's urine
04:22and 45 in the hair.
04:24We realize that a certain number of molecules are forbidden,
04:26it does not mean that they are still used by farmers,
04:28but that they are still found in the bodies of our children.
04:31How is it that forbidden cancer molecules are still present
04:34and that we continue to give authorizations to put on the market
04:37products that are still potentially endocrine-disturbing or carcinogenic
04:40without analyzing the cocktail effect between forbidden molecules and authorized molecules?
04:44The authorization to put products on the market depends on the European level in the first place,
04:48and we realize that molecules that are authorized sometimes for 10, 20 or 30 years
04:53could be either probable carcinogens or mutagenic or toxic products.
04:57What we would like is that at the European level,
05:00we set ourselves the goal of releasing pesticides,
05:02of synthesis in the agricultural world,
05:04and that we massively support agriculture.
05:06So we can produce differently, but we have to review the whole system.
05:09I think that the more we move forward in time,
05:11the more we will also have an increase in these four pediatric cancers.
05:14For our son, he is still in remission,
05:16but we will always live with a sword of Damocles above our heads.
05:19I want to say that we are not fighting for him,
05:21we are fighting for those who will come after.
05:22We went through hell, our son went through hell.
05:24It's really hell to see his kid connected to chemicals
05:29and to see all that it implies behind.
05:32Our challenge is to raise awareness among decision-makers,
05:35since we still depend on European and national decisions.
05:38I really don't want anyone to live what we lived with our son,
05:42but sometimes I tell myself that if he had lived it,
05:44I might change the policies they are putting in place.
05:53Can European rules better protect citizens from the toxic effects of pesticides?
05:58I asked the question to the PanEurope network,
06:00which advocates for a Europe without pesticides.
06:02The European legislation on pesticides is indeed one of the best of the world,
06:07but it's not properly implemented.
06:09One example is the Directive on the Sustainable Use of Pesticides,
06:14which puts as a priority to put in place all preventative measures
06:19to avoid the need to use pesticides.
06:22For instance, very simple techniques like crop rotation
06:26or using resistant varieties of crops to be less attractive for pests.
06:31This directive is not implemented by Member States correctly.
06:35The European Commission has to start launching infringement procedures
06:39and being much stricter with Member States.
06:42But beyond that, could Europeans actually do without pesticides?
06:47Yes, of course.
06:48The majority of the use of pesticides is not intended to produce food that we directly eat.
06:53If we would stop subsidizing all these crops that then are exported outside of the EU
06:59and focus EU cap money to what we truly eat,
07:04we could produce everything organically at the same cost as it is now.
07:08But the problem is that our agriculture is completely open to international markets
07:13and all this cap money, which is one third of the EU budget,
07:17is going directly in the pockets of the pesticide industry, the fertilizers
07:22and also to subsidize exports, which is really not feeding citizens.
07:27The European mediator has just denounced the Commission's disrespect
07:31for the three-month deadline set for authorizing dangerous chemical substances.
07:37The delays sometimes take several years,
07:40while companies can continue to spread potentially toxic or carcinogenic substances.
07:47So Brussels can do better.