[Source: WHO 2013] -- With their widespread and often improper use, children can be unnecessarily exposed to herbicides. The use of pesticides and herbicides has increased over recent decades with more than 2.6 million metric tons of pesticide active ingredients used annually. Pesticides, including weed killers, are used in a variety of settings such as farms, houses, schools, parks, swimming pools, hospitals and other places in the community.
Synthetic herbicides can enter the body through eating, drinking, breathing and absorption through the skin. Certain populations of children, for example, children of agricultural workers, are especially vulnerable to poisoning from herbicides. A fetus can be exposed in-utero when their mothers use herbicides, work in sprayed fields, or work near spraying operations. While breastfeeding is the best choice for infant nutrition, it is possible that mothers exposed to excessively high levels of herbicides can retain chemicals in their breast milk, thereby exposing their children.
Exposure to high levels of herbicides may lead to acute effects, such as headaches, dizziness, weakness, and nausea. These flu-like symptoms may not be reported by the exposed individual if he or she does not recognise the connection between the symptoms and the exposure. For example, in many countries symptoms of herbicide poisonings are mistaken for malaria symptoms and treated as such.
Healthcare professionals often receive only limited training in occupational and environmental health, and in herbicide-related illnesses in particular. More severe herbicide poisoning can cause respiratory distress, convulsions, coma and death. It is estimated that there are between one million and five million pesticide poisonings each year, resulting in 20 thousand deaths worldwide. The exact number of child poisonings from herbicides is not known but is assumed to be large. Often the effects of childhood exposure will not emerge until adulthood, for example, as the triggering cause of cancers.
Chronic, low-level exposures can affect the skin, eyes, nervous system, cardiovascular system, respiratory system, gastrointestinal tract and liver, kidneys, reproductive system and blood. Recent research has examined the effect that some herbicides may have on the endocrine (hormone) systems of children. Such endocrine disrupting chemicals or EDCs can mimic or inhibit normal hormones, which may affect the physical and neurological development of children and adolescents.
Children's Vulnerability to Toxic Synthetic Herbicides
Behavioural: Very young children explore, taste and touch objects and crawl on the ground, thereby ingesting and absorbing pesticides if the areas and items they explore are contaminated. As children begin to walk, develop climbing skills and grasp objects, pesticides left within their reach pose a danger. Children with pica, a tendency to eat nonfood items, are at particular risk of ingestion of pesticides in contaminated items, such as soil or other objects that they tend to eat.
Physiological: A child's size and weight affect pesticide poisonings because, relative to their size, children eat, drink and breathe more than adults. Children's bodies metabolise,detoxify and eliminate substances differently than adults' bodies do. The central nervous system undergoes its period of most rapid development from the fetal stage through the first six years of life, so young children are especially vulnerable to pesticides that act as neurotoxins. The dermal area of an infant per unit of body weight is greater than that of an adult, allowing for greater vulnerability to dermal absorption. Children's breathing zones are closer to the ground, exposing them to inhalation of pesticides that linger at floor level.
Developmental: Children's systems can be permanently damaged if exposed to toxins during certain crucial periods of development. A child also typically has more years of life than an adult in which to develop health effects from pesticide exposures. Infants and children often eat different foods from adults and usually eat a less varied diet than adults do. For example, children typically drink large quantities of milk and tend to rely heavily on foods such as fruits and juices. If children's typical foods contain elevated levels of pesticides, these will expose children at greater levels than adults.
How to avoid damaging children's health with pesticides, including herbicides: DO NOT USE THEM. See our Working with Weeds Guide for alternatives.
