CHEMICALS play an important role in our daily lives as they are used in every sector of the economy in the industrialised world.
They form the basis of life and are building blocks from which some products are made.
However, while chemicals help to sustain the economy, they negatively impact on human health and the environment if not properly managed.
In Zambia, the agriculture sector is the largest user of chemicals and over 67 per cent of the people are involved in the sector.
There is a drastic increase of smallholder farmers, agro- chemical dealers, stockists and primary firms that have engaged in the agrochemical business and, particularly at the lower end of the market.
On the other hand, there is informal, unregulated trade, unsafe handling, storage and distribution practices and the sale of illegal products because there are gaps in the sound management of chemicals.
The major gaps in the national sound management of chemicals include inadequate data to be shared among institutions and lack of awareness among officers in various institutions on sound management of chemicals.
The other gaps include lack of designated desk officers for chemicals management, lack of forum for data and information sharing among institutions and inadequate preparedness to respond to environmental chemical spills.
For example, a check in Choma last week, where the Zambia Environmental Management Agency (ZEMA) and its partners, Musika and CropLife Zambia held a training workshop for agro dealers, revealed that there was unsafe handling of chemicals by some dealers.
Musika is an independent Zambian non-profit company supported by the Embassy of Sweden and the UK Government in Zambia to stimulate and support private sector investment in the smallholder and rural markets.
The one week long training was aimed at increasing safety handling of pesticides and increase product knowledge leading to dissemination of correct product information to the end users-mostly farmers.
The other objective of the training was to establish a network for information dissemination on pesticides and improved record keeping among the farmers.
Musika’s operations are national in scope and stretch across the agricultural industry, working primarily with those corporate entities in the sector that are committed to engaging the rural poor as their clients, suppliers and consumers.
The clients include agribusinesses that demonstrate both the willingness and the ability to develop strong and constructive commercial relationships with the lower end of the agricultural market.
This is done through the provision of high quality, commercially focused technical support and a range of smart, catalytic investments aimed at reducing the initial risks involved in exploring, testing and developing new markets.
Musika stimulates and deepens commercial engagement with the rural poor and seeks to fundamentally change the way agricultural markets work with and benefit the smallholder sector.
But CropLife Zambia is the industry association that draws its membership from the agrochemical companies.
It is mandated to ensure solutions to industrial wide based challenges and has a specific responsibility relating to ‘stewardship’ and the safe use of agrochemicals.
Therefore, against the background of poor handling of agrochemicals, I will in the next couple of weeks, look at improving agrochemical knowledge and safe handling practices in an attempt to safe guard the environment.
In other words, I will be discussing the life cycle of safe handling of agrochemicals or what experts call sound management of chemicals.
But today, I will endeavour to give an over view of the impact of agrochemicals on the environment if not properly managed.
So as earlier stated, agriculture is the largest employer in Zambia
where over 60 per cent of its population is engaged in the sector at small scale level.
In an effort to enhance or improve their yield, it has become invertible for the famers to apply chemicals.
This has seen an increased demand for agrochemicals which has promoted the proliferation of both illegal and legal agro dealers selling banned pesticides and encouraging incorrect application of chemicals due to gaps in the sound management of chemicals.
Well, I am glad that the regulator-ZEMA and its partners are alive to this fact and they have come up several interventions which include providing information through different trainings across the country.
So far they have targeted to train over 300 agro dealers countrywide on the best safe methods of handling agro chemicals.
The interventions would also ensure certification of agro dealers’ operations as a legal requirement and comply with the law on agrochemical management and disposal.
The chemical safety capacity building certification would result in development of a database of certified dealers and enable the development of systems for ZEMA to police.
It is, however, critical that agrochemical dealers and farmers understand chemical safety issues, failure to which, not only the environment is threatened but also national food security.
An example of a threat to national food security is the planting of legumes such as groundnuts in a field that was previously sprayed with the herbicide Atrazine.
What will happen, thereafter, is that the groundnuts will not geminate until after two years because Altrazine does not easily break down.
The environmental impact of pesticides consists of the effects of pesticides on non-target species.
According ZEMA senior Inspector Christopher Kanema, over 98 per cent
of sprayed insecticides herbicides reach a destination other than their target species, because they are sprayed across entire agricultural fields.
Run off can carry pesticides into aquatic environments while wind can carry them to other fields, grazing areas, human settlements and undeveloped areas, potentially affecting other species.
Other problems emerge from poor production, transport and storage practices.
Over time, repeated application increases pest resistance, while its effects on other species can facilitate the pest’s resurgence.
The use of certain agrochemicals has been associated with important environmental and ecological damages. Excessive use of fertilisers can lead to the contamination of groundwater with nitrate, rendering it unfit for consumption by humans or livestock.
Water containing large concentrations of nitrate can poison animals by immobilising some of the haemoglobin in blood, reducing the ability to transport oxygen.
In addition, the run-off of agricultural fertilizer into streams, lakes, and other surface waters can cause an increased productivity of those aquatic ecosystems, a problem known as eutrophication.
Eutrophication is the process by which a body of water becomes enriched in dissolved nutrients (as phosphates) that stimulate the
growth of aquatic plant life usually resulting in the depletion of dissolved oxygen
The ecological effects of eutrophication can include an extensive mortality of fish and other aquatic animals, along with excessive growth of nuisance algae, and an off-taste of drinking water.
Pesticides are used to reduce the abundance of species of pests that is, the targets to below a level of acceptable damage, which is economically determined.
A pesticide is a chemical substance used to kill weeds, insects, rodents, or other pests. Unfortunately, during many uses of pesticides in agriculture, the exposure of other organisms, including humans, is not well controlled.
This is especially when entire fields are sprayed, for example, when using application equipment drawn by a tractor, or mounted on an airplane or helicopter.
During these sorts of broadcast applications, many non-target organisms are exposed to the pesticide.
This occurs on the treated site, and also on nearby off-sites as a result of drift of the sprayed agrochemical.
These non-target exposures cause many unnecessary poisonings and deaths of organisms that are not agricultural pests.
In addition, there is a widespread, even global contamination of the environment with some types of persistent pesticides, especially with organochlorines such as dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), dieldrin, and aldrin.
DDT is a synthetic chemical compound once used widely as a pesticide.
It is probably best known for its dual nature: although remarkably effective in destroying certain living things that are harmful to plants and animals, it can also be extremely dangerous to humans and the environment.
This contamination involves the widespread presence of pesticide residues in virtually all wildlife, well water, food, and even in humans.
Residues of some of the chemicals used in animal husbandry are alsobelieved to be a problem, for example, when traces of antibiotics and
bovine growth hormones occur in consumer products such as meat or milk.
It is believed that some human beings are suffering from health complications and diseases like cancer because of exposure to chemicals.
Some of the worst examples of environmental damage caused by pesticides have been associated with the use of relatively persistent chemicals, such as DDT.
Most modern usage of pesticides involves chemicals that are less persistent than DDT and related chlorinated hydrocarbons.
However, severe damages are still caused by the use of some newer pesticides.
The use of some pesticides is also risky for humans if exposed to them and the cost of treating people is quite high.
There have been some examples of pesticides causing extensive toxicity to humans and the costs of treating such cases are high.
For instance, the estimated health costs associated with exposure to pesticides applied on cotton farms by farm households and cotton workers in five main cotton producing provinces was K16, 484.8 million in 2008.
Of this health impacts on farm households in the Kafue basin is K11, 286.8 million or 68.5 percent. Eastern pro
vince, accounts for the remaining 31.5 percent;
Medical expenses account for 41 per cent of the illness costs, and lost wage income due to sickness by cotton farmers and workers accounts for the highest percentage of 51 per cent.
Other costs represent about eight per cent of the total health cost.
Medical costs are mostly internalised by government since health care in rural areas is free.
The estimated human health costs are by no means comprehensive and exhaustive as they are not based on scientifically verified short and long-term human health effects of exposure to agro-chemicals applied on cotton farms.
These estimates apply only to occupational health exposures and exclude off-site health impacts due to chemical runoffs from cotton farms
The health costs estimates do not include environmental impacts of these chemicals both on-site and off-site.
Thus the cost of illness approach to valuation provides the minimum economic costs of pesticides used in cotton production.
This information is used in the cost-benefit analysis of government action and inaction with regard to chemicals management in the agriculture sector.
Sound Management of Chemicals should therefore be an integral part of any approach aimed at promoting sustainable development and reducing the impact of chemicals on human health and the environment
Chemicals are critical to the manufacture of many products and protection of human health, and an important contributor to the GDP and employment.
However, without good management practices, chemicals and their hazardous wastes can pose significant risks to human health and the environment especially the poorest members of the global community.
In urban areas, low-income or minority populations are often exposed to hazardous chemicals and associated wastes in their jobs or because they reside in polluted areas.
In rural areas, most chemical exposure and environmental pollution is linked to the misuse of agricultural chemicals and pollution brought by waterways, impacting the natural resources upon which these communities depend.
Many important benefits are achieved by the use of agrochemicals and these are largely associated with increased yields of plant and animal crops, and less spoilage during storage.
It should be learnt today that safe handling of chemicals is integral aspect of sustainable environmental management, quality human health and secured national food security.
That is it for today until next week, God bless!
ENVIRONMENTAL TIP!
**Did you know that it takes 400 years for plastic bottle to decompose-ZEMA
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