Pesticide neurotoxicity in Europe: real risks and perceived risks

The same classes of pesticides are used all over the world, but conditions of use vary widely, and public perceptions of risk vary more widely still. Within Western Europe pesticide residues in commercially traded foodstuffs are subject to international standards and are closely monitored. Hence risks to consumers from such foods are negligible. The major hazards are poisoning associated with high acute/chronic operator exposures due to occasional pesticide misuse. In addition pesticides provide a convenient means of attempting suicide in agricultural areas. In contrast, public perception of risks from pesticides centres on low level exposures, and is heightened by several factors. These are: poisonings associated with pesticide misuse; the indirect nature of the benefit to the consumer (cf. medicines or public health uses); and commercially motivated marketing of pesticide-free produce. In press reports pyrethroid insecticides have been linked to "Multiple Chemical Sensitivity" in Germany, and organophosphates to "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome" in the UK. A number of pressure groups are actively campaigning to ban all uses of organophosphorus pesticides. Unfortunately evaluation of the real risks of pesticide exposure is rendered less certain by the lack of any very useful retrospective exposure measures with which biological effects of uncertain aetiology might be correlated. This means that although we can be sure that pesticides pose no gross threat to health in the general population, subtle effects on more highly exposed sub-populations are, as yet, more difficult to rule out.