

Chlorpyrifos, a Highly Hazardous Pesticide, is Banned in 39 Countries but Still Widely Used in the Republic of Armenia
Armenian Women for Health and Healthy Environment (AWHHE) NGO calls on government leaders to ban the toxic chemical and move toward safer food and farming․
A recent report from AWHHE NGO demonstrates that the highly hazardous pesticide chlorpyrifos, a chemical known to damage children’s brains, is still widely used in our country, even while it has been banned in much of the world. Impacts on the brain connected to chlorpyrifos have been found at the lowest detectable dose, so the evidence shows that there is no safe level of exposure.
“We call on our government leaders to take action to end the health and environmental threats from chlorpyrifos by establishing a national ban on its use,” said Elena Manvelyan, President of AWHHE NGO. “Safer alternatives to chlorpyrifos including ecological farming practices without pesticides are already being used around the world. This pesticide poses unreasonable dangers to our children, to farmers and farm workers, to pesticide vendors and to our rural communities and we should not tolerate its use any longer.”
As part of IPEN, a global network of public interest groups working for a toxics-free future, AWHHE NGO surveyed the national situation around the use of chlorpyrifos in Armenia, finding that the volume of import of pesticides containing chlorpyrifos to Armenia is increasing year by year. Chlorpyrifos is generally supplied as an ingredient of multi-component preparations. In 2022, 42.6% (513) of imported pesticides were insecticides, with 11% of insecticides being preparations containing chlorpyrifos.
Chlorpyrifos is banned or strictly regulated in 39 countries. It was banned across Europe in 2020 due to evidence that it can cause brain damage in children and harm fetal brain development. Prenatal and childhood chlorpyrifos exposures are linked to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and impaired mental- and motor-skill development in young children. Chlorpyrifos can also cause neurological damage in adults and animal studies suggest it is an endocrine disrupting chemical with estrogenic and androgenic effects.
Environmental contamination, human exposures, and health impacts from chlorpyrifos have been documented in many countries, including Indonesia, India, Mexico, Chile, and elsewhere. In addition, chlorpyrifos residues have been widely detected in vegetables and other food.
For more information on chlorpyrifos and other highly hazardous pesticides, see the IPEN brief at https://ipen.org/documents/global-threat-highly-hazardous-pesticides.
May 16, 2024 at 16:13