Letter: Health groups urge MEPs to adopt a health-protective EU pesticides reduction law

The Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL) and its members have written to MEPs in the European Parliament’s ENVI committee, calling on them to support pesticide reduction in the EU, ahead of a vote on the draft Sustainable Use of Pesticides Regulation (SUR) on 24 October 2023.

European agriculture is pesticide-intensive, relying on a vast amount of health-harming substances that independent scientific literature has linked to cancer, negative effects on children’s healthy development, hormone disruption, reproductive disorders, and other serious health impacts. But pesticides are also still used in parks, schoolyards, sport facilities and other areas where children and other groups at risk spend their time. 

Pesticides can impact human health through direct exposure, and indirectly via a degradation of the environment and ecosystems. Exposure is of particular concern for children, as it can harm their healthy development, increasing their risk for disease later in life.

HEAL, together with the undersigned member organisations call members of the ENVI committee to:

1. Swiftly negotiate a legally-binding, health-first update of EU pesticides rules to protect current and future generations
2. End the use of hazardous pesticides by 2035
3. Create pesticide-free areas and adequate buffer zones

Click here to read the letter.

Click here to take a look at HEAL’s campaign page explaining why the Sustainable Use of Pesticides Regulation (SUR) is an opportunity to prevent disease and protect nature.