Georgina Downs is a British journalist who is a campaigner on health effects of pesticides. [1] [2] After experiencing chronic illness throughout her childhood and adolescence, she launched a campaign against the use of pesticides in industrial agriculture. [3]
In 1983, Downs moved with her family from Pagham, West Sussex, to a house next to agricultural fields near Chichester. [2] [4] The nearest field adjoining the house and garden was initially used for grazing livestock, but shortly after she arrived, it was converted to arable land. According to Downs, over the following years, her health gradually worsened as the result of exposure to the pesticides used in the nearby fields. Medical tests at that time ruled out motor neurone disease and Parkinson's disease as the cause. [4]
After researching the subject of pesticides and their effects on human health, Downs decided to challenge government regulations. In 2008 she challenged the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) in the High Court of Justice, which ruled that the department did not comply with European Union regulations. The court ruled that Downs had provided "solid evidence" that residents had suffered harm to their health and that the existing approach to pesticide regulation in the UK was not, as DEFRA had argued, "reasonable, logical and lawful". [5] [6]
DEFRA appealed the ruling, however, and it was overturned by the Court of Appeal in July 2009. The appeal judge, Lord Justice Sullivan, ruled that the High Court justice had substituted his own evaluation of the health effect of pesticides for the evidence provided by DEFRA. [7]
Downs said that the appeal judges had ignored the evidence that she had provided — and that the landmark High Court victory had been based on. She stated that she would take the case to the European Court of Human Rights. [8]
In 2016 Downs launched a petition calling on the Prime Minister Theresa May to ban all crop spraying of pesticides near residents' homes, schools and playgrounds. The petition was signed by thousands of other rural residents also reporting adverse health impacts of crop spraying in their localities. [9] The petition was also signed and supported by English barrister Michael Mansfield QC, along with other high-profile environmentalists including Stanley Johnson, Jonathon Porritt, Gordon Roddick and Ben Goldsmith, amongst others. [9] [10]
Since 2006 Downs has been registered as a journalist with both the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists (IFAJ) and the British Guild of Agricultural Journalists (BGAJ). [11] [12]
Downs won a British Environment and Media Awards (BEMA) in 2006, [13] and was one of the winners at the inaugural Cosmopolitan Awards also in 2006 winning the Heroine award. [14]
In 2015 Downs was nominated for The Observer Ethical Awards to find the best green Briton. A report in The Guardian said her work "promotes a vision of a green and sustainable Britain where non-chemical and natural farming methods are widely adopted." [15]
Before starting her pesticides campaign full-time, Downs was a singer-songwriter, performing in various live acoustic venues including at the Kashmir Klub in London. [16] [17] [18] She has also played Matron Mama Morton in a local production of the musical Chicago . [2]
Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, commonly known as DDT, is a colorless, tasteless, and almost odorless crystalline chemical compound, an organochloride. Originally developed as an insecticide, it became infamous for its environmental impacts. DDT was first synthesized in 1874 by the Austrian chemist Othmar Zeidler. DDT's insecticidal action was discovered by the Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Müller in 1939. DDT was used in the second half of World War II to limit the spread of the insect-borne diseases malaria and typhus among civilians and troops. Müller was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1948 "for his discovery of the high efficiency of DDT as a contact poison against several arthropods". The WHO's anti-malaria campaign of the 1950s and 1960s relied heavily on DDT and the results were promising, though there was a resurgence in developing countries afterwards.
Silent Spring is an environmental science book by Rachel Carson. Published on September 27, 1962, the book documented the environmental harm caused by the indiscriminate use of a type of pesticide used by soldiers during WW2. Carson accused the chemical industry of spreading disinformation, and public officials of accepting the industry's marketing claims unquestioningly.
Roundup is a brand name of herbicide originally produced by Monsanto, which Bayer acquired in 2018. Prior to the late-2010s formulations, it used broad-spectrum glyphosate-based herbicides. As of 2009, sales of Roundup herbicides still represented about 10 percent of Monsanto's revenue despite competition from Chinese producers of other glyphosate-based herbicides. The overall Roundup line of products represented about half of Monsanto's yearly revenue in 2009. The product is marketed to consumers by Scotts Miracle-Gro Company. In the late-2010s other non-glyphosate containing herbicides were also sold under the Roundup brand.
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Aerial application, or what is informally referred to as crop dusting, involves spraying crops with crop protection products from an agricultural aircraft. Planting certain types of seed are also included in aerial application. The specific spreading of fertilizer is also known as aerial topdressing in some countries. Many countries have severely limited aerial application of pesticides and other products because of environmental and public health hazards like spray drift; most notably, the European Union banned it outright with a few highly restricted exceptions in 2009, effectively ending the practice in all member states.
The light brown apple moth is a leafroller moth belonging to the lepidopteran family Tortricidae.
On 26 June 2003, EU farm ministers adopted a fundamental reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and introduced a new Single Payment Scheme for direct subsidy payments to landowners.
Laura Juliet Kuenssberg is a British journalist who presents the BBC's flagship Sunday morning politics show.
Carole Jane Cadwalladr is a British author, investigative journalist and features writer. She is a features writer for The Observer and formerly worked at The Daily Telegraph. Cadwalladr rose to international prominence in 2018 for her role in exposing the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal for which she was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, alongside The New York Times reporters.
The light brown apple moth is a leafroller moth belonging to the lepidopteran family Tortricidae. The moth was confirmed to be present in mainland United States in 2007, principally along the West Coast. The State of California and the US Department of Agriculture quickly imposed agricultural quarantine measures and decided to use aerial spraying to try to eradicate the moth. This led to substantial public controversy and claims of adverse health effects. Aerial spraying was discontinued in 2008. Trapping, monitoring, and inspection efforts were reduced or eliminated in 2012 due to budget problems.
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Agriculture in the United Kingdom uses 69% of the country's land area, employs 1% of its workforce and contributes 0.5% of its gross value added. The UK currently produces about 54% of its domestic food consumption.
The British Crop Production Council (BCPC) is an organisation that promotes the use of good science and technology in the understanding and application of effective and sustainable crop production. BCPC is a Registered Charity and a Company limited by Guarantee.
Air pollution in the United Kingdom has long been considered a significant health issue, and it causes numerous other environmental problems such as damage to buildings, forests, and crops. Many areas, including major cities like London, are found to be significantly and regularly above legal and recommended pollution levels. Air pollution in the UK is a major cause of diseases such as asthma, lung disease, stroke, cancer, and heart disease, and is estimated to cause forty thousand premature deaths each year, which is about 8.3% of deaths, while costing around £40 billion each year.
Thiamethoxam is the ISO common name for a mixture of cis-trans isomers used as a systemic insecticide of the neonicotinoid class. It has a broad spectrum of activity against many types of insects and can be used as a seed dressing.
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