This is a crucial year for the global campaign to halt the production and use of deadly pesticide endosulfan.

Already, with still 3 months before the next Stockholm Convention review committee meeting, we have seen huge progress towards an end to endosulfan.

Last month, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) made the landmark decision to terminate endosulfan.

It concluded that endosulfan posed unacceptable risks to wildlife and agricultural workers, and that these risks significantly outweighed what limited benefits it had for growers and consumers nationwide.

The US has shown commendable concern for the health of its people and environment, and this decision will be a major step towards protecting the million or so individuals and families in the US whose primary occupation is in agriculture.

However, the struggle isn’t over yet.

Many people around the world are still exposed to this dangerous pesticide each year – resulting in severe and debilitating physical deformities, reproductive problems, renal failure, and in the worst cases death.

Attention must now turn to the small number of countries still using endosulfan - including Australia, Argentina, Canada, China, India and South Africa.

 

Where next?

The Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (the government body responsible for the registration of all agro-chemical in Australia entering the market place) is currently reassessing the registration of endosulfan.

The APVMA will have to consider the evidence and decide whether endosulfan use causes harm to farmers, their family, crops, animals or the environment.

 

What you can do

Pesticides know no geographic or political boundaries, and residues of endosulfan have been found great distances from application sites – even in the blood of polar bears in Svalbard.

The decisions national governments make affect the whole planet.

Write to the APVMA
and ask them to cancel the registration of endosulfan.

Learn more

Read about the high price of endosulfan
being paid by ordinary people in EJF’s latest report End of the Road for Endosulfan.

Watch Australia’s 60 Minutes feature

on the horrific consequences of endosulfan exposure as experienced through the eyes of Australian hatchery owner Gwen Gilson.