Eggplant Integrated Pest Management AN ECOLOGICAL GUIDE

_____________________________________________________________________Ecology of insect pests and natural enemies4.11.10 Pesticides and health in IPM trainingIn a few countries in Asia, a health component has been added to IPM training programmes. Previously,health studies were aimed to change national pesticide policies. While some of the more hazardouspesticides were banned or restricted, frequently these bans or restrictions were not enforced. Healthstudies were redesigned to allow farmers to conduct their own studies to change farmer’s ‘personalpesticide policy’.Farmer groups in Cambodia, Vietnam and Indonesia are conducting health studies within their owncommunities among their fellow farmers that include:• Analysis of the chemical families and WHO health hazard categories of the pesticides in use (and/oravailable in local pesticide shops).• Analysis of the numbers of pesticides (and types) mixed together in one tank for spray operations.• Analysis of liters (or approximate grams) of pesticide exposure per season or year.• Field observations of hazardous pesticide handling.• Interviews and simple examinations for any signs and symptoms of pesticide poisoning: before, afterand 24 hours after spraying.• Household surveys to determine hazardous pesticide storage and disposal practices and occurrencesof pesticide container recycling or repackaging.Children who are participating in IPM schools are also conducting similar studies with their parents andneighbors through the Thai and Cambodian government educational programs.Through the experience of gathering, analyzing and presenting this data back to fellow farmers, a morefundamental understanding of the health as well as the ecological hazards of inappropriate pesticide useis gained. These studies motivate farmers to join IPM, sustain IPM principles on better field observationbased decision making on pest control, and also can be used to measure the impact of IPM. Forexample, the Vietnam IPM program is measuring the impact of community IPM by conducting healthstudies before and after initiating community IPM in 4 areas.This is especially critical to vegetable IPM where the most indiscriminant use of pesticides is occurring.Too many chemical products are mixed and applied together too often during a single growing season.This results in numerous cases of mild to moderate pesticide poisoning among the farmers, increasedpest or disease resistance, and significant disruptions to the local ecology.For example, Indonesian shallot farmers were mixing up to 9 different products in one tank (average 4)and spraying 2-3 times per week (Murphy, 2000). The Cambodian farmer is mixing on average 5pesticides per tank that is applied up to 20 times per season (Sodavy, 2000). Up to 20% of all sprayoperations were associated to witnessed pesticide poisoning among wet shallot farming in Java (Kishi,1995). During a single spray session among Sumatran women (of whom 75% were using an extreme,high or moderately hazardous to human health pesticide), 60% had an observable neurotoxic sign ofpesticide poisoning (Murphy, in press). In a survey conducted by IPM farmers, in Cambodia among 210vegetable growers, 5% had a history of a serious poisoning event while spraying (loss of consciousness)and another 35% had a moderate episode.Therefore among vegetable growers from the perspective of farmers’ health alone there is a tremendousneed for alternatives to indiscriminant toxic pesticide use. Not enough safe pest-control strategies existfor farmers to protect the personal health and that of their crops and the surrounding environment (pers.comm. Murphy, 2000).For more background and practical exercises on pesticides and health, please refer to the reports“Guidelines for Farmer-to-Farmer IPM Health Studies, 1998”, “Exercise Guide on Health and Pesticides”,and "Field guide exercises for IPM in cotton: pesticides" from the FAO-Vietnam National IPM Program.Contact the FAO-ICP office in Bangkok to obtain copies (address in section "Acknowledgements" in thisguide) or for more information. In addition, two manuals by Helen Murphy are available from DanidaThailand both in Thai and English language, and can be downloaded from their website:http://www.ipmthailand.org/en/download_documents.htm.67Eggplant Ecological Guide