Your tomato salad, sukumawiki stew could take you to early grave: scientists

Farmers, horticultural workers, and open-source water users are continually being exposed to toxic pesticides imported into the country from India, US, China and Europe, the largest exporters of farm chemicals to Kenya. 

Data released on Wednesday by Heinrich Boll Stiftung, an environment and food security lobbyist, shows that Kenyans are consuming food containing residues of pesticides banned in Europe in 2007, but sold to commercial and small-scale farmers in Kenya.  

The report dubbed Toxic Business: Highly Hazardous Pesticides in Kenya, reveals that in a batch of 310 pesticides investigated, 76 percent were found to be highly toxic and 44 percent are banned in other countries. Substances such as chlorpyrifos, acetochlor, glyphosate, mancozeb and chlorothalonil have been found in the analysis, the report shows.

Kenya in the recent past, has had to deal with other hazardous components, including, carbosulfan a substance known to damage critical human organs. According to World Health Organisation (WHO), human exposure to carbosulfan leads to liver and kidney failure. Additionally, humans also tend to have corroded omental fat layering and peripheral fat, which are key in protecting the inner intestinal linings. 

Glyphosate, despite WHO and the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) giving it a clean bill of health on water contamination, and its carcinogenic tendencies to humans according to a 2016 report by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), was also found in traces in analysed pesticides.

Equally, another toxic substance, carbofuran notwithstanding being listed on the Pest Control Products Board’s (PCPB) website as a banned substance (both in Kenya and US), is still available, multiple sources show, but labeled differently. The three – carbosulfan, glyphosate and carbofuran – are the most common in the Kenyan market. 

Today, farmers in Kenya are using thousands of tons of toxic pesticides in their maize, wheat, coffee, potatoes, and tomato plantation fields, especially in the Rift Valley, Central, Western and Nyanza regions.

Surprisingly, most of the pesticides easily available over agrovet counters, have been proven to cause cancer or genetic defects, impair fertility, or harm unborn children, and the report recommends a more stringent approach to ending this.

Thriving toxic business  

Kenyan farmers are spending up to USD 72.7 million annually (approx. Sh10.7 billion) to sustain the booming import business of killer chemicals, as regulators fall short of cracking the whip. Imported pesticides and fungicides, the report shows, are used on over 20 percent of agricultural land.  

Citizen Digital has established that most of the faulted brandoweners constitute makers of soluble concentrate non-selective foliar and systemic herbicides with a wetting agent that are used in agriculture, horticulture, forestry, industrial, recreational and weed control practices. Over 73 multinational agrochemical companies have been cited in the toxicity importation saga.  

“Out of the 310 pesticide products used, only six are insect pest control biopesticides, and only one biopesticide commonly used to control fungal diseases. Sustainable biopesticides account for a mere two percent of the total pesticide volume used in Kenya, while hazardous pesticides account for 76 percent. 

“Highly Hazardous Pesticides are priced lower per hectare compared to the biopesticide which is majorly used on beans produced for export to the European market,” reads part of the report.  

Another harmful chemical chlorpyrifos, for example, despite being banned in the US over glaring effects, is a pesticide used to control aphids in wheat-growing regions.  

This is despite being scientifically proven to negatively affect the nervous systems in children. It has also been linked to destructive effects on the structure of the brain, acute leukemia in children, damage to the heart and poisoning of human blood. Farmers using it without proper protective gear have been worst affected.  

Moreover, chlorpyrifos is also extremely toxic to fish yet a study conducted by researchers in Lake Naivasha found chlorpyrifos levels to be way above the recommended one in the water. 

Coincidentally, chlorpyrifos is still approved for controlling aphids on flowers, mostly grown around the Lake Naivasha region. The continued use of chlorpyrifos endangers the lives of Kenyans who depend on the lake for water and fish needs. 

Kenya losing market

In February this year, the pesticides regulator sounded an alarm over the rising cases of cancer in Embu County, pointing to a deep-rooted yet unchecked use of harmful chemicals on miraa and muguka farms. 

The board’s Chief Executive Officer Mrs Esther Kimani said that the country in recent years has lost a huge foreign horticulture market worth billions of shillings due to the continued use of banned pesticides with acephate.  

Despite the board’s endeavor to publish and list down all the banned pesticide chemicals, a spot-check by this writer on the official website of the board bore numerous banned substances, but are still cited by the Heinrich Boll Foundation report, as having been found to be in use.  

As the nation props up its agricultural output capacity to feed the devastated North due to the ongoing drought, food security has been in a circus. This is amid the nation’s shrinking production capacity brought about by the ravaging impacts of climate change and drought. 

With such chilling revelations of pesticide-laced foodstuffs in circulation on the market, and a revival of a debate of the much opposed genetically modified foods, neither one guarantees Kenya’s food security nor its safety.  

While the court slammed the brakes on President William Ruto’s cabinet decision to open GMO foodstuffs importation, the lifting, the court ruled, lies in the hands of Kenyans, who did not participate in the lifting of the eleven-year-old ban. 

With climate change impacts heavy to bear, new pests and diseases are continually pushing both commercial and smallholder farmers to use more lethal pesticides on farms, exacerbating the impacts on humans and the environment.  

In 2021, the Africa Development Bank (AfDB) found in a survey carried out in the sub-Saharan Africa region, that smallholder farmers are increasingly using a group of pesticides that are harmful to humans to adapt to climate change, and in essence recommended the ban on their manufacture, trade and use. 

The pesticides, according to AfDB, are often toxic to humans. They can contribute to increased risks such as neurological, respiratory, immunologic and reproductive health problems as well as cancer, immune system damage and other sickness in the short term.