Alarming Public Health Study Documents Effects of Bee-killing Insecticides on People in Japan

Center for Food Safety Concerned Rural Americans Face Similar Risks
WASHINGTON, DC (November 18, 2015)—From 2006 to 2014, Japanese doctors documented a new cluster of symptoms reported by hundreds of rural Japanese people: patients suffering from recent memory loss, finger tremors, and combined symptoms of headache, general fatigue, palpitation/chest pain, abdominal pain, muscle pain, and cough. Public health researchers later associated these symptoms with the level of exposure to agricultural neonicotinoid insecticides, used on fresh fruits, tea, rice and a host of other human food crops. Urine sampling showed the level of symptoms correlated with the amount of neonicotinoid consumption.
Last week, the public health team composed of Japanese, American and African researchers published the alarming story of those patients. The patients lived in rural communities and were being exposed to agricultural chemicals mostly through ingestion of pesticide-contaminated food and also perhaps by blowing sprays and dusts in a heavily-farmed, densely-populated area. Residential, pet and other exposures may also have contributed. The people involved were not farmworkers and did not have unusually high occupational exposures.