Failure to develop new pesticides could increase health risks

Subject: CIEH

Public health could be put at risk unless there is improved availability of products to control public health pests in industrialised and disease endemic nations.

Failure to develop new products and pests’ increasing resistance to existing products will increase the risk of vector borne diseases, delegates at a Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH) and United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) conference will hear.

The International Public Health Pesticides Workshop will bring together countries, organisations and experts to address the challenges facing the development and use of public health pesticides.

CIEH President Dr Stephen Battersby said:

“The World Health Organization has observed that gaining authorisation to use new pesticides is becoming more complex and costly.

“It is likely that the development of pesticides will be severely reduced by the economics of the approval process.

“This, coupled with the increased threat from pests because of changes in climate, could have serious repercussions for public health.”

The three-day international event will look at solutions to barriers to developing pesticides and discuss the relative risks of protecting both human health and the health of the environment.  

Representatives from the Stockholm Convention will discuss the Global Alliance for DDT alternatives. The conference will see the launch of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation global survey on public health pesticide regulation, which provides an overview of global public health pesticide registration and related legal processes.

The event on 19 to 21 May at 15Hatfields, London, is organised by the CIEH in the UK and the US EPA and supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE), the US Agency for International Development, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the US Department Agriculture Agricultural Research Service.

For further information please visit: www.iphpw.org.