Lawmakers warn against aerial spraying of fungicide

MANILA, Philippines - Akbayan party-list lawmakers are  alarmed over reports of  increasing use of fungicide through aerial spraying in agro-industrial plantations in Mindanao.

“A health and environmental hazard that started in Davao has now spread all the way to South Cotabato despite the strong public protests and the pronouncements of the Department of Health (DOH) against such practices,” Rep. Walden Bello and Barry Gutierrez said in a statement.

“We are gravely alarmed by the claims made by  the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI) of the Department of Agriculture regarding the safety of the pesticide used in aerial spraying in Davao,” they said.

The lawmakers earlier filed House Bill 3381 or the Aerial Spray Ban Act of 2013.

They slammed the BPI for claiming the active element is only 0.33 percent of the mix.

The BPI, they said, even declared the formula safer than table salt, coffee, and paracetamol.

“The BPI clearly missed the point on this issue. Just because the formula is incapable of killing people does not make it absolutely safe for farm workers and communities to be consistently exposed to it,” they said.

“It is not the one-time intake of a 0.33 percent-strong fungicide that threatens the communities around the plantations. The problem is as simple as one plus one - the accumulated use of this formula over time generates hazardous effects to the health of the population and the environment,” the lawmakers argued.

The lawmakers said the DOH in its studies discovered that 40 percent  of the pesticides applied by aerial spraying is lost to drift to the residential areas, communities and schools in the vicinity of the plantations.

The DOH has already found traces of pesticides in the blood of the affected population. The slow mental development of children in affected communities has also been linked to the continued exposure to aerially-sprayed pesticide.

“The threat of pesticide drift requires government to implement the precautionary principle to protect the ordinary Filipino from the toxic effects of aerial spraying, and in DOH’s expert opinion, aerial spraying should be banned,” Bello and Gutierrez said.

Akbayan joined Mamamayan Ayaw sa Aerial Spraying (MAAS) and the Ecowaste Coalition in condemning the aerial spraying of fungicides across agricultural plantations all over the country.

They said it is impossible to contain the toxic substances from aerial spraying within only the plantations.

“The wide-scale coverage of the method that makes it least costly for pest control is precisely the same feature that makes this most hazardous for the communities surrounding the plantations,” they said.