2023-10-20 17:20:02
The closer a child lives to a large plot of vines, the higher their chances of developing leukemia. A new link between health and pesticides revealed by an Inserm study.
The surface area of the vines in question and not their mere presence. A new causal link has been revealed between health and pesticides by a study published this Wednesday, October 17 by the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm). Exposure to pesticides is, in fact, suspected of being a risk factor for pediatric cancers.
“On average, for each 10% increase in the area covered by vines within the 1,000 meter perimeter, the risk of lymphoblastic leukemia”, the most common, “increases by almost 10%”, details Inserm.
However, according to this study, a child has no greater risk of developing leukemia when he lives near vineyards, less than a kilometer away.
“Obviously there are consequences. If we don’t want any problems, we must stop using pesticides. On the other hand, we will lose our harvests or research must advance to have more resistant vine plants. But it’s not going to happen in 1 day,” deplores an Ardèche winegrower who claims to use pesticides very early in the morning and late in the evening when people living nearby are at home.
“In Ardèche, the plots of vines are quite diffuse. At a glance, there are 7,000 cultivated hectares out of the 500,000 in Ardèche. To compare, Bordeaux has 90% of the territory under vines. It’s the dose of phytosanitary products that makes the fish,” explains Pierre Champetier, former president of the IGP Ardèche, whose house is on the edge of his farm without ever worrying regarding his health.
Same observation for Philippe Dry, director of the Ardèche winegrowers’ cooperative: “At our scale in Ardèche, we have little agricultural and urban pressure compared to the Bordeaux region for example”, before adding: “However, my winemakers feel like they are being trained to use chemicals to produce more. We suffer from the evil that we ourselves created with this desire for high yields and monoculture.”
If the president of this cooperative lists some solutions such as lightening crops or using organic farming to limit chemicals, Philippe Dry regrets the extension of urbanization: “We are expanding more and more urban areas, so they are closer and closer to cultures even if there are regulations.”
Depending on the region, the results appear to be heterogeneous, with clearer associations between the risk of pediatric leukemia and living near vineyards in Pays de la Loire, Grand-Est, Occitanie, or Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur. Corsica.
Nouvelle-Aquitaine does not appear in this case. “This result surprises us a little.” for a region “very wine-producing, with lots of children near the vineyards”recognized Stéphanie Goujon, for whom “maybe the indicator is not optimal for this region”. More generally, it calls for caution on “interpretation of regional results”.
For the moment, the choice has been made to focus first on viticulture, cultivation “perennial, more clearly identifiable than crops subject to rotation, for example”and associated with “numerous phytosanitary treatments.
Work will continue to analyze other cultures, including “very long work to take into account annual variability”, other types of cancers, but also assess exposure to different pesticides used on crops.
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