Impact of Pesticides
Pesticide pollution has wide-ranging, harmful effects on Australia’s health and natural environment.
Australia’s Strategy for Nature 2024–2030 names pesticides as a major polluter:
‘Pollution, including from chemicals such as pesticides and herbicides, waste and contamination, is driving ecosystem change. It has especially devastating direct effects on freshwater and marine habitats.’
Pesticide use causes biodiversity loss, soil degradation, water contamination, pollinator decline and climate change acceleration.
Pesticide exposure is linked with multiple serious, long-term health issues such as cancer, Parkinson’s Disease, birth defects, fertility decline, endocrine disruption, autoimmune diseases, allergies, gut health conditions and more.
A fundamental reset is needed in Australia to transition away from hazardous pesticide dependency, to nature-friendly, sustainable, agroecological practices.
Australia’s use of hazardous pesticides
As of December 2024, Australia have banned only 24 hazardous pesticides. The UK and EU have banned 225 hazardous pesticides, nearly 10 times more.
Having banned only 24, Australia sits alongside Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, North Macedonia, Rwanda, Togo and Zimbabwe. Indonesia have banned 61, Thailand 48, Bosnia and Herzegovina 42, Laos 39, Canada 31, and New Zealand 30.
As of 2022, 144 highly hazardous pesticide ingredients were authorised for use in Australia, compared to only 73 in the UK.
Australia is consistently one of the last countries in the OECD to ban hazardous pesticides, allowing decades more harm to accumulate. An example was the APVMA allowing mercury to be used on sugar cane crops until 2021, despite 60 years of evidence as to its harm. APVMA did not cancel this registration for health or environmental reasons – the company themselves removed it from the market.
Australia imports and uses pesticides that are banned in the countries that produce it.
- Paraquat is produced in China and UK, yet both countries will not allow it to be used in their own countries. They do, however, profit from selling it to countries like Australia.
- Bayer, the German pharmaceutical, chemical, and agricultural biotechnology company, bought Monsanto in 2018. Bayer own and sell the glyphosate-based herbicide and probable carcinogen RoundUp. Germany’s government have banned glyphosate for use in private homes in Germany, as well as in protected water areas, domestic gardens, allotments and elsewhere because of the unacceptable harm it causes to human health and the environment.
- EU are sending large quantities of bee-killing pesticides that they have banned to countries like Australia.
- There are 5 pesticides that Switzerland consider too dangerous to use in Switzerland, and so toxic they consider it too unethical to even export. These are: Atrazine, Diafenthiuron, Methidathion, Paraquat and Profenofos. 4 of those: Atrazine, Diafenthiuron, Paraquat and Profenofos are still legal and used in Australia. Methidathion was withdrawn following a near 30 year review by APVMA, and after the US EPA banned it. France and Belgium have also banned the export of hazardous pesticides.
Australia implements the risk-based approach to pesticides, rather than a more cautious and simple hazard-based approach. Click here to learn more about what that means.
Silencing the truth
Agribusinesses have sophisticated and well-funded tactics of spreading disinformation, corrupting science, manufacturing doubt and attacking truth and truth telling.
US RIght To Know has outlined multiple examples of this. For instance:
‘When chemical giant Syngenta hired biologist Tyrone Hayes to study its widely used herbicide atrazine, the company didn’t like the results. Hayes found that atrazine, one of the most common weed killers in America, disrupted hormones in frogs and altered their sexual development. Instead of facing the science, Syngenta went into product-defense mode: pressuring Hayes not to publish, and when he did, launching a full-scale effort to discredit him. Internal company documents later revealed a coordinated campaign to smear Hayes’s reputation and bury his findings.This story is typical of how the world’s largest chemical corporations act when confronted with evidence their products cause harm.’
See here for how the Canadian pesticide regulator collaborated with Bayer to silence unpleasant truths about the harm caused by neonicotinoids.
These unethical and harmful tactics are the same as those conducted by the tobacco and fossil fuel industries, in fact the same Public Relations firms have often been used.
Further information on the tactics being used by agrochemical companeis can be found below:
- Chemical Capture: The Power and Impact of the Pesticide Industry
- How the pesticide industry influences science and policy and why it matters for public health
- Mapping commercial practices of the pesticide industry to shape science and policymaking: a scoping review
The history of pesticides is bleak reading, leading to the need for agribusinesses to conduct sophisticated and well-funded PR campaigns to combat inconvenient truths. Inconvenient truths that include:
- The gas used in Auschwitz and other concentration camps was a pesticide.
- Many of the nerve agents which are currently used as pesticides were designed for chemical warfare, and companies after WWII needed a peacetime market.
- eg. Chloropicrin, synthesised in the year 1848, was used as a choking poison gas during by Germany against the Allies in WW1, and reports are it is currently being by Russian forces against Ukrainians. This active ingredient is approved by APVMA and used throughout Australia – see here for the registered products. Chloropicrin is listed as a banned choking agent by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), and using it in warfare is illegal under the Chemical Weapons Convention.
Australia’s compromised regulatory system
There is a conflict of interest at the heart of Australia’s pesticide regulator.
Australia’s federal regulator, the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Authority (the APVMA), is the only regulator in the OECD to be majority-funded by industry.
Inevitably, the APVMA has faced sustained criticism by independent reviews of being captured by industry.
There can be no alternative to industry capture when a regulator is funded by those is it meant to regulate. This must change.
Australia does not apply the precautionary principle when it comes to managing pesticide use in Australia. This is in contrast to other countries.
That means the onus is on the Australian public to demonstrate harm is being been caused by hazardous pesticides, rather than the companies having to demonstrate they are safe.
It can take decades to demonstrate harm – harm that may be known by the manufacturer, or not known because they’ve purposefully not done proper scientific tests that may demonstrate harm.
In the EU and UK, agricultural chemical companies need to demonstrate a product does not cause harm before it can be released onto the market.
Dr Tanzim Afroz, from Edith Cowan University, says Australia’s approach to pesticide regulation is “incautious” compared with UK legislation, which has been influenced by EU policy. “The EU approach is to adopt the ‘precautionary principle’ – where there is scientific uncertainty, take precaution,” she said. “Australia doesn’t implement the precautionary principle when we’re talking about pesticide management, at the legislative nor at executive level.”
Australia’s Cancer Bodies
While international cancer institutes are naming pesticides as a risk factor associated with cancers, Australia’s cancer authorities are yet to name pesticides as a risk factor, despite the overwhelming evidence – all while Australia’s diagnosed cancer rates are the highest in the world, and continuing to rise.
International recognition of the link between pesticides and cancers
Breast Cancer UK has stated ‘we know that certain pesticides are linked to breast cancer risk, so we would recommend eating organic food whenever possible.’
Breast Cancer Prevention UK: ‘If there is scientific evidence that a chemical has a possible link to breast cancer, our advice is to avoid that chemical and call for its use to be restricted or banned so that everyone is more protected.’
Cancer Society of Ireland lists certain pesticides as a risk factor for developing Acute Myeloid Leukaemia.
Canadian Cancer Society lists exposure to certain pesticides pre-conception, in utero or as a child as a risk factor for increasing the risk of developing childood leukaemia.
New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation writes ‘all cancers develop because of gene changes. Usually, these changes are due to chance or to factors such as ageing, exposure to carcinogenic substances or to damaging environmental effects like sunshine, radiation exposure, pesticides, cigarette smoke or alcohol.’
A panel of the leading, independent world experts from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) found glyphosate to be a probable carcinogen to humans.
The Childhood Leukemia International Consortium advises ‘it would appear prudent to limit the use of home pesticides before and during pregnancy, and during childhood.’
Harvard University School of Public Health conducted research, published in the American Academy of Pediatrics, that found children exposed to indoor insecticides would have a higher risk of childhood hematopoietic cancers. They wrote ‘preventive measures should be considered to reduce children’s exposure to pesticides at home.’
Despite this, the Cancer Council of Australia, Breast Cancer Network Australia (BCNA), Leukaemia Foundation and others are not yet naming pesticides as a risk factor.
‘Megan Varlow, director of cancer control policy at Cancer Council Australia, says they are “not aware of strong evidence” to suggest environmental factors may increase cancer risk.’ – Sydney Morning Herald, November 2024
Australia’s National Cancer Control Indicators are also silent on their website on preventative strategies, where there is no mention of pesticides.
Refer to PAA’s page on Cancers for further information.
Pesticide Action Australia 