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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Kerala's farm labourers are paying for excessive pesticide use with their health -- and lives -TA Ameerudheen

Kerala's farm labourers are paying for excessive pesticide use with their health -- and lives -TA Ameerudheen

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published Published on Feb 19, 2019   modified Modified on Feb 19, 2019
-Scroll.in

Two labourers died of suspected pesticide poisoning in Kuttanad, the state’s rice bowl, in January.

On the morning of January 17, KK Sanal Kumar strapped a motorised sprayer onto his back and left for a paddy field near his home in Peringara gram panchayat of Kerala’s Pathanamthitta district. The owners of the field, Unnikrishnan and Sanil, gave him several bottles of the highly hazardous pesticide Viraat to spray on their 40-day-old crop. The field forms a part of the 55,000-hectare rice-growing area in the Kuttanad region, popularly known as Kerala’s rice bowl.

Kumar diluted the pesticide with water with his bare hands and sprayed it without wearing protective gear. Manufactured by the United Phosphorous Company, Viraat is a concoction of cypermethrine and quinalphos pesticides. The Kerala Agriculture University’s advisory to farmers cultivating commercial crops recommends using it on cotton and brinjal, but not rice.

But Unnikrishnan and Sanil decided to spray Viraat in their rice field after detecting the presence of Ila Churutti Puzhu, a pest that eats paddy leaves. This is the first crop season after Kuttanad was devastated by the worst floods in a century in August, and farmers are banking on a good yield to tide over their losses. They just cannot afford to leave their crop to the mercy of pests.

Kumar began work at 10 am but had to stop after about an hour and a half when his machine malfunctioned. He fixed it quickly and resumed the spraying at 12 noon. At around 3.30 pm, he complained of uneasiness and was taken to the Government Taluk Hospital in Changanassery, around 10 km away. As his condition worsened, he was referred to the Government Medical College in Kottayam. There, he told his wife Lavanya that he had taken ill “because of the pesticide”. He died early next morning. He was 43. His autopsy report, seen by Scroll.in, states that the “death happened due to poisoning”.

The same day another man died of suspected pesticide poisoning in Peringara. But the police and agriculture department officials claimed that Mathai Iso, 68, was not an agricultural labourer and that he was not exposed to Viraat. The cause of his death is yet to be officially confirmed.

Addressing the Assembly on February 4, Kerala’s agriculture minister confirmed that Kumar’s death was caused by pesticide positing, but did not to mention Iso. However, the government announced compensation of Rs 3 lakh to each of them.

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Scroll.in, 16 February, 2019, https://scroll.in/article/912375/keralas-farm-labourers-are-paying-for-excessive-pesticide-use-with-their-health-and-lives


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