Kerala   

Endosulfan trauma still haunts them

Kasaragod: People exposed to pesticide Endosulfan in Kasaragod district continue to suffer. Despite government promises, official efforts to treat and rehabilitate the victims and protect them from exposure to contaminated soil and water are wanting.

While the incidence of children born with neurobehavioural disorders, congenital malformation and other abnormalities has come down in most of the 11 worst-affected panchayats, it continues to occur in other panchayats. While about 500 deaths since 1995 have been officially acknowledged as related to the spraying of Endosulfan, unofficial estimates put the total number of deaths since the late Seventies at around 4,000. People are still dying from the after-effects of the pesticide, while more than 1,000 live in misery. More than 9,000 people have health problems caused by the pesticide used by the State-owned Plantation Corporation of Kerala (PCK) in its cashew plantations. The PCK has cashew plantations at Kasaragod, Rajapuram, Cheemeni and Mannarkkad.

The corporation began aerial spraying of the pesticide in its plantations spread across 15 panchayats in the district in 1978 and its application continued till 2001. The pesticide, which is not easily degradable, contaminated the soil and water and found its way into the food chain, affecting lower and higher forms of life in the area, including human beings.

The half-life of Endosulfan varies from 60 days to 800 days. At its Kasaragod estate alone, the PCK sprayed 31,510 litres of Endosulfan between 1990 and 2000.

Only a small fraction of this would remain in the environment now. its degrade products such as Endosulfan sulfate and Endosulfan diol are also toxic. The combined half-life of Endosulfan and its toxic residues is estimated to range from nine months to six years

This means that toxic materials could still be present in the environment of the affected villages in measurable quantities, especially in sediments where they accumulate.

(A daily intake of even 0.006 mg Endosulfan a kg of body weight by humans could be harmful. The accumulated quantity of toxins in the environment as in 2001 would have come down to about 30 per cent of the original quantity if we assume a half-life of six years and less than 0.5 per cent if we assume a half-life of nine months. The actual quantity would be something in between, spread across a large area.

However, there is the possibility of very high levels of bioaccumulation and bioconcentration in sediments and the food chain).

With the reduction of the poison in the environment, insects, butterflies and other species that had almost disappeared from the affected panchayats have returned.

Y.S. Mohana Kumar, who runs medical clinics at Yathrika and two nearby localities and was the first doctor to draw public attention to the rising number of congenital abnormalities in the Nineties, told The Hindu that cases of children born with abnormalities have come down in his locality.

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