Evidence linking pesticide exposure to serious health impacts has been steadily mounting, with health experts repeatedly sounding the alarm and now, after six more children have died from poisoning, they are urging government to act against a pushback by a profits-driven chemical industry, writes MedicalBrief.
Cancer, birth defects or DNA mutations are just some of the risks of a list of 346 pesticides the government wants removed from shelves by June 2025, while concerned experts said they have been calling for years to have certain chemicals banned, according to an amaBhungane report on the Daily Maverick site.
The Department of Agriculture, Land Reform & Rural Development (DALRRLD) is phasing out specific products as part of a global effort to ban the dangerous chemicals, and the issue was highlighted this week after terbufos, a chemical prohibited in the EU but still registered for use in SA, was tied to the fatal poisonings of the six Soweto pupils.
The pupils died earlier this month after eating chips bought from a spaza shop, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi confirmed on Monday.
The pesticide was identified as the organophosphate terbufos, reports News24, which has long been flagged by experts as contributing to a growing number of poisonings. It is used widely in agriculture.
Motsoaledi said organophosphates – in general – were not intended to be used in domestic settings and that while investigations were still ongoing, it was suspected that spaza shop owners were using terbufos to keep rodents and other pests at bay.
Inhabitants of poor urban townships are plagued by pest infestations and turn to informal vendors for “street pesticides” that are either registered agricultural products too hazardous to be safely used in domestic settings, or unregistered products that have been imported illegally, Professor Andrea Rother, head of the environmental health division at the University of Cape Town’s school of public health, told BusinessLIVE.
Registered products were typically decanted into small, unlabelled containers and sold for domestic use, while unregistered products were imported, mostly from China, already packaged.
“This is not a new problem. We have been trying for many years to get these products banned because of the lack of control in preventing them getting on to the street,” Rother said.
Terbufos was responsible for more than half the deaths of children who died of acute pesticide poisoning in Cape Town’s western metropole from 2010 to 2019, according to a study co-authored by Rother that was published in BMC Public Health last year.
Toxicological analysis was conducted in 50 of the 54 cases of paediatric pesticide poisoning recorded at the Salt River Mortuary: 29 were due to terbufos.
Terbufos became widely used in informal settlements after the Agriculture Department banned the chemical aldicarb in 2016, Rother said. Aldicarb was previously used as rat poison. Both products could be formulated as small, dark grey granules and looked similar to the naked eye.
She said reducing access to hazardous chemicals like terbufos needed to go hand-in-hand with the provision of safer alternatives.
Public health consultant Maria van der Merwe said the EU and many other high-income countries had removed terbufos from their list of approved agricultural pesticides, but it was still widely used in many low- and middle-income countries.
“There is a call, including by the UN, to (ban) it,” she said.
Multiple agencies were responsible for ensuring food and the premises in which it was sold were free of dangerous chemicals, including the SAPS and environmental health practitioners employed by local municipalities.
However, SA is short of environmental health practitioners, with not even a quarter of the number recommended by the WHO.
Spate of poisonings
Authorities have been on a drive to track down illegal pesticides and other chemical agents suspected be linked to at least 2 652 child poisonings in Gauteng over the past three years.
Warnings fall on deaf ears
Doctors working in public health have been warning for years that poisoning cases linked to organophosphates are on the rise.
And last year, a paper using data collected at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital by doctors and researchers from the Medical Research Council warned that the statistics were showing an alarming increase in poisoning cases, specifically in Gauteng, where 2 652 children were treated for poisoning in three years.
Although organic solvents like acetone were the most common poisons noted, pesticide poisoning had been associated with “increased odds of death” as early as 2021.
“Public health measures to reduce the burden of organic solvents, medications and pesticide poisoning are urgently warranted,” the experts said in their paper.
Their research showed that medical professionals had noted an alarming increase in poisonings in Gauteng, specifically since 2019, with pesticides comprising 8% of the cases.
“Children with pesticide poisoning were ten-fold more likely to require high-care or ICU admission,” they added.
Data from the Tygerberg Poisons Information Centre in the Western Cape, published by the Western Cape Department of Health in 2023, said the centre had received more than 1 000 calls about exposures to pesticides in that year.
Government list and industry resistance
On 14 October, the government announced new regulations to improve control of the sale of pesticides, effective from January 2025. It published a list of 28 chemicals that, according to the new Globally Harmonised Systems of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals (GHS), are either 1A: known to cause cancer, mutations to DNA, birth defects or other reproductive issues based on human evidence, or 1B: presumed to cause these effects based on animal evidence.
These 28 chemicals are found in 346 pesticides currently used on crops, as wood preservatives or to target rodents, according to aMaBhungane.
“Those products causing cancer, changes to your genetic makeup or DNA, or those that affect the development of the foetus or interfere with normal reproductive development, those are the chemicals that we are now focusing on,” said Maluta Mudzunga, the department’s registrar.
Of these 346 pesticides, 48 contain active ingredients that have been identified as carcinogenic, while 19 are mutagenic and 263 either damage fertility or harm babies in the womb. (Another 16 products are on the list because they contain an inert ingredient classified as 1A/1B).
Despite this, pesticide manufacturers – including Germany’s BASF, Switzerland’s Syngenta, Israel’s Adama and India’s UPL – are pushing to keep 115 of these pesticides on the market, using loopholes provided by the department’s own regulations.
These would allow companies to keep selling their products if they can show there are no viable alternatives and that phasing out the product would cause a public health crisis or be economically catastrophic for the farming industry.
Elriza Theron, advocacy and communications manager for CropLife South Africa (which represents the pesticide industry), said recently: “We all would love to have an Erin Brockovich kind of situation where the big guy gets taken down by the small guy because no one cares about the environment. But … as agriculture, it is absolutely the opposite, because we need the environment and we need people, to actually be in business.”
South Africa’s reality
In 2003, researchers took a closer look at the use of pesticides in the Eastern Cape. They cited the growing concern about the occurrence of certain birth defects that have increased over the past few years.
They concluded there was a “significant association” between pregnant women being exposed to pesticides and their babies being born with a range of physical and neurological problems.
And women who stored water in reused chemical containers were almost twice as likely to have babies with birth defects as women who used new plastic containers.
The study also found 60% of small-scale subsistence women farmers used pesticides and were seven times more likely to have babies with birth defects than women not exposed to pesticides.
Twenty years later, in August 2023, Professor Marcos Orellana – the UN Special Rapporteur on Toxics and Human Rights – visited South Africa to assess the continuing impact of pesticides on people.
In a report, he noted increasing evidence linking pesticide exposure and serious health impacts on the skin, eyes, liver, kidneys, endocrine and nervous systems, with children and women being the most vulnerable to these risks.
“During my visit to the Western Cape… women farmworkers were routinely exposed to hazardous pesticides and would denounce serious adverse health impacts in their communities,” Orellana said on his preliminary findings.
This included women without proper protective gear working in vineyards immediately after pesticides had been sprayed.
“I also learnt that pesticides meant for agricultural use are illegally sold and used to combat rampant cockroach mass infestations that spread in the absence of sanitation services in informal settlements. I was appalled to learn of the many children who were poisoned or died from eating, drinking or handling hazardous pesticides.”
Children’s deaths
Early in October, Gauteng Health spokesperson Motalatale Modiba had said investigations had confirmed the deaths of eight children were the result of exposure to pesticides, often sold in informal markets and which lack proper regulation and safety warnings.
The next day, on 6 October, the six Soweto children died from terbufos ingestion after eating snacks from the local spaza shop.
Terbufos is an organophosphate, a notoriously lethal compound found in both pesticides and nerve gas. In 2022, there were 34 reported cases of terbufos poisoning and five deaths. Although terbufos has long been banned in the EU, it continues to be widely used in South Africa, including on citrus and – illegally – in urban areas to control pests.
During the July 2021 riots, a Durban warehouse belonging to agrichemical company UPL was set alight with more than 6 000 tons of pesticides inside – including 20 tons of terbufos – sending a cloud of toxic fumes and a river of toxic chemicals into the surrounding communities.
Part of the problem, the UN Special Rapporteur noted, was that South Africa’s main pesticide law, the Fertilisers, Farm Seeds, Agricultural Remedies and Stock Remedies Act 36 of 1947, is out of date.
“Despite scientific evidence,” he noted, “many highly hazardous pesticides are still legal and in use in South Africa. They are banned in the EU, yet still produced in European countries for export, particularly to developing countries.
“…South Africa should ban the import of all highly hazardous pesticides, including those banned for use in their country of origin, without delay.”
The phase-out
The Department’s phase-out of 1A/1B chronic toxicity chemicals is part of the process to bring South Africa’s pesticides law into the 21st century and in line with global standards.
The WHO has identified eight categories of “highly hazardous pesticides” that should be phased out, ranging from chemicals that are acutely toxic, like terbufos, to those causing chronic conditions like cancer, genetic mutations, birth defects or other reproductive issues, mostly through long-term exposure.
“South Africa has phased out all the chemicals … identified to be Persistent Organic Pollutants in terms of the Stockholm Convention … except that the country has been allowed to use a limited amount of DDT in terms of controlling malaria,” Mudzunga said.
Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) are hazardous chemicals that don’t easily degrade but instead linger for years, potentially poisoning people and the environment. Anyone caught using POPs since 2021 faces a R5m fine and five years in prison. Last year, South Africa also phased out Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs), which are known to cause cancer.
But when the draft regulations for the upcoming phase-out were first published in 2021, the only category of chemicals targeted was 1A: known carcinogens, mutagens and reproductive toxins. The other 24 chemicals falling into the category of 1B, presumed carcinogens, mutagens and reproductive toxins, were initially left off the list.
Had these regulations been passed, it would have made for a very short list: arsenic acid, benomyl, brodifacoum and chromium trioxide, ie, chemicals where, for tragic reasons, we have direct evidence of their effects on humans.
However, as environmental lawyer Angela Andrews pointed out in a submission to the registrar on behalf of civil society group UnPoison: “Many presumed toxicants are in Category 1B because it is unethical to conduct experiments on humans to test whether human exposure to such toxicants causes cancer, mutations, or adverse effects on sexual function, fertility or on development.”
When the final regulations were published last year, the 1A category – known carcinogens, mutagens and reproductive toxins – was on the phase-out list, but so were 24 other chemicals classed as 1B: presumed toxins.
“Getting rid of or prohibiting or banning certain products, of course, (the industry) are not going to be happy. I don’t think you will also be happy that, in the future, you can’t sell a certain category of products,” Mudzunga said.
“But … they are of the view that category 1A must be phased out.”
The fight to keep them
South Africa has an opaque but profitable pesticide market.
In the past five years, we have imported pesticides worth R38bn and exported R15bn worth, largely to the SADC region. Our largest supplier is China (R12bn), but Belgium, Germany and the US are all in the top 10.
When the Department announced the phase-out of 1A/1B chemicals, it also kept the door open for some products to stay on the market in “exceptional circumstances” through a derogation (exemption) process.
Provided there are no viable alternatives, there are three loopholes in this regard:
1. If the risk to humans, animals or the environment is “negligible … under realistic worst-case conditions of use”;
2. If the pesticide is “essential to prevent or control a serious danger to human health, animal health or the environment”; or
3. If banning the pesticide would have “a disproportionate negative impact on society” when compared to the risk.
“We have to look at the risk,” said Roeleen le Grange, CropLife’s regulatory manager.
“(W)hen we’re phasing out these chemicals, it’s the precautionary approach… because we’re unsure about the risks, we basically put in a blanket ban because we don’t know what the risks are, and the consequences of not knowing is high… then we say, if you want to keep it on the market, you must do a risk assessment and show you can still use it without that hazard posing a major risk.”
At least 25 companies have told the department they will apply for derogations on 61 products.
Chromium trioxide: wood preservative, carcinogen and mutagen
Two chemicals that were always going to be on the phase-out list are arsenic acid and chromium trioxide. The former is a
1A: known carcinogen while the latter – a type of hexavalent chromium – is both a 1A: known carcinogen and a 1A: known mutagen, meaning it causes changes to one’s DNA that can be inherited by future generations.
Both arsenic and chromium trioxide are ingredients in Chromated Copper Arsenate (CCA), a wood preservative used to treat fences, telephone poles, structural timber and children’s playgrounds. CCA is easily recognisable by its initial light green colour, which fades to grey over time.
In the US and EU, CCA was voluntarily withdrawn by manufacturers 20 years ago, after concerns were raised about it containing arsenic. The product was never officially banned, but it has largely been replaced by less toxic but more expensive options.
Yet CCA remains widely used in South Africa.
The local manufacturer, Dolphin Bay Chemicals, is fighting to keep its CCA products – Permacure Oxide and Celcure Oxide – on the market by employing the argument that the risk posed by 1A/1B chemicals is minimal if used under strictly controlled conditions (derogation loophole #1).
Brodifacoum: rat poison and reproductive toxin
Brodifacoum is a common ingredient in rat poison and, like arsenic and chromium trioxide, is classified as 1A: known reproductive toxin, putting it to the top of the list of targeted chemicals.
Despite this, manufacturers are fighting to keep their products – including popular brands like Rattex, Rodex and Scientific Supa-Kill – saying that removing the products would cause a public health crisis.
A statement from the Rodenticide Derogation Working Group said: “For companies of which anticoagulant rodenticide products form a significant part of their product portfolio, there would be a detrimental effect on their commercial interests. But commercial losses would pale in comparison with the dire public health, food safety and food security crisis likely to unfold if farmers, industry and the general public lose access to the most widely used rodent control method available.”
Data collected by the Poison Information Centre and provided to News24 in September makes it clear that children are being poisoned by both legal and street pesticides at an alarming rate. At the Red Cross Children’s Hospital, 10% of general poisoning cases were linked to pesticides. Of those, a third were caused by organophosphates, a third by anticoagulant rodenticides that contain chemicals like brodifacoum, and a third by unidentified chemicals.
Propiconazole: fungicide and reproductive toxin
Propiconazole is a fungicide used on crops and as a wood preservative. It is also classified as a 1B: presumed reproductive toxin and is a potent endocrine disruptor, meaning it mimics hormones found in the human body.
Last year, the EU decided propiconazole could stay on the market as a wood preservative, but for extremely limited uses. Among other requirements, the EU ruled that it “should only be authorised for indoor use” where run-off can be tightly controlled since “spray-drift by manual spraying is impossible to be mitigated outdoors”.
The ruling also noted that “wood treated with propiconazole should not be placed on the market to produce furniture and play structures”.
Yet in South Africa, several companies are fighting to keep propiconazole as a treatment for powdery mildew and other fungi on crops where preventing run-off and spray drift is impossible.
Schalk van der Merwe, national marketing manager for Adama, said they were “applying for derogation for essential uses only … and for a limited time … Withdrawal of products before suitable, sufficient alternatives are available could impact negatively on … growers, local and export markets, and the economy”.
Adama, which is part of the Syngenta group – one of the big four companies that dominate global pesticide sales – is “investing in derogations, without certainty about the outcome or the period for which the derogation could be granted”, he said.
However, data show that Adama considers its propiconazole product, Bumper 250 EC, essential for a range of crops, including peaches, nectarines, mangoes, wheat and barley, and is also applying to keep using products containing dimethomorph for potatoes and grapes, and linuron for sweet potatoes and carrots. Both dimethomorph and linuron are classified as 1B: presumed toxic to reproductive health.
Israel-based Adama has decided not to fight for some of its other products, including Diurex, which contains diuron (1B: carcinogenic) and Soprano, which contains carbendazim (1B: mutagenic). Both will be removed from shelves by end-May 2025.
However, Adama’s parent company Syngenta, owned by China’s state-owned Sinochem, is using a different tactic.
Apart from the 61 products companies are defending through the derogation process, many have launched a parallel process to have 54 products reclassified from, for instance, 1B: presumed carcinogen to 2: suspected carcinogen.
Double standards
South Africa, with its massive agricultural sector and outdated laws, has long been a haven for pesticides “made in Europe” but also “banned in Europe”.
Weed killer Paraquat, for instance, has made a fortune for Syngenta: in 2018, the company reported more than $100m in sales from just this chemical.
Ironically, it’s illegal to sell Paraquat in Basel, Switzerland, where Syngenta is based. It’s also illegal to sell it in Huddersfield, England, where the herbicide is made. But in South Africa, you can buy five litres for roughly R500.
Paraquat is a highly toxic herbicide which has been banned in the EU since 2007, but continues to be sold in South Africa where it is sprayed to create firebreaks before controlled burns.
And paraquat is not alone.
Benomyl is classified as a 1B: presumed carcinogen and mutagen by the European Chemical Agency and banned across the EU.
It was used as a fungicide (under the name Benlate) until it became the focus of several lawsuits alleging it had caused damage to crops.
Separately, some parents in the US, UK and New Zealand filed lawsuits alleging the chemical was linked to serious birth defects, including children being born with severe eye deformities.
Although studies on rats convincingly replicated these results, manufacturer DuPont denied its product was responsible. The cases were eventually settled out of court, by which point DuPont had voluntarily withdrawn its benomyl products from the market.
But only in the US and the EU.
Products containing benomyl continue to be sold in South Africa by UPL, Adama, Villa Crop Protection and Castle-Ag, particularly to the citrus industry. An inventory from the UPL warehouse fire shows that as recently as July 2021, 5 227kg of products containing benomyl were destined for market in KwaZulu-Natal.
All four companies said they would not fight the phase-out of benomyl, although the Citrus Growers’ Association said one of the companies had applied for “a grace period for on-farm use of benomyl until 31 May 2025 and made provision for product stock accordingly”.
Dimethomorph: grape fungicide and reproductive toxin
Dimethomorph is a fungicide used in two BASF products: Orvego and Acrobat, both widely used on grapes.
In 2019, the European Chemical Agency classified dimethomorph as a 1B: presumed reproductive toxin, ordering that products containing this ingredient be labelled “H360F: may damage fertility”.
Yet despite its 1B classification, BASF, Arysta LifeScience (owned by UPL) and Adama brought a derogation application to renew their dimethomorph products in the EU, saying “the exposure of humans and/or the environment to dimethomorph was negligible under realistic conditions of use” – the same loophole available in South Africa.
The EU did not agree, and in April 2024, ruled that dimethomorph should be phased out.
Among other findings, the EU concluded that “dimethomorph is not necessary to control a serious danger to plant health which cannot be contained by other available means including non-chemical methods” and “dimethomorph meets the criteria for endocrine disruptors for humans and wild mammals … due to its oestrogen, androgen and steroidogenesis (EAS)-modalities”.
Mancozeb: citrus fungicide and reproductive toxin
Mancozeb is the active ingredient in 49 products sold in South Africa, and is a powerful fungicide used on citrus, onions and flower bulbs.
The ingredient’s effectiveness in destroying fungus has a similarly detrimental effect on the human endocrine system.
Endocrine disruptors like mancozeb mimic oestrogens that then disrupt hormone function, causing development, growth and reproduction challenges in humans and wildlife. A study by the University of Venda, Steve Biko Academic Hospital and the University of Pretoria found it had short-term toxic effects on the immune system and other cells that impact the thyroid, and can cause liver tumours.
When high doses were given to pregnant lab rats, some pups were born with malformed tails and meningoencephalocele, a rare condition where part of the brain herniates through the skull.
The chemical, classified as a 1B: presumed reproductive toxin by the EU, was subsequently banned by the bloc in 2021.
Despite this, 11 companies – backed by the citrus industry – are fighting to keep mancozeb on SA shelves through the Department’s reclassification process.
In April, the Citrus Growers’ Association, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition, launched a case with the World Trade Organisation’s Dispute Settlement Body challenging what they deem discriminatory measures on the citrus exports from South Africa to the EU.
They didn’t mention the health effects of mancozeb spraying, only highlighted the R3.7bn a year in opportunity costs for the export citrus industry to comply with the rules.
UPL has decided to relinquish several other products, though, including Benomyl, Colloso and Propicon – all of which were present in large volumes in the UPL warehouse in Cornubia, Durban, when it burnt down during the July 2021 unrest.
Included in the warehouse inventory were 5 227kg of Benomyl (containing benomyl, 1A: toxic to reproductive health), 1 223kg of Colloso (containing flusilazole and carbendazim, 1B: mutagenic, toxic to reproductive health), and 1 425 litres of Propicon (containing propiconazole, 1B: toxic to reproductive health).
All of these will be banned from June 2025. Mancozeb may remain on the market for a lot longer.
Daily Maverick article (Open access)
News24 article – Soweto children died from pesticide exposure, experts confirm (Restricted access)
BusinessLIVE article – Experts call for ban on chemical that killed Soweto children (Open access)
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Health inspector army seeks ‘chemical agent’ tied to food poisonings
Pesticides may have a role in Gauteng ‘food poisonings’
Venilla Yoganathan
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