NATIONAL RESULTS AT THE NATIONAL LEVEL. The Petiriv study conducted by Public Health France and the ANS and presented this Monday, September 15 concludes that people living near the vines are more exposed to plants protection products than those who live far from cultures.
This study, “unprecedented for its magnitude”, was carried out in 2021-2022 in 265 areas of wine and non-cultivators, with 56 substances measured in the outer air, air and dust inside the houses, and in the urine and hair of the participants.
1,946 adults and 742 children participated, part of which lived less than 500 meters in vines, and the others more than 1,000 meters from all the culture. The requested substances cover three large families of phytopharmaceutical products used for the treatment of vines: fungicides, insecticides and herbicides.
Increases to 1,000%
For urine, dust and ambient air, pollution levels in wine growth areas are higher than in areas far from the entire culture. For example, the increase in urinary impregnation is between 15%and 45%, while the increase in dust contamination varies according to substances from a few percent to more than 1,000%.
For hair and inner air, sought pesticides are also present more frequently in the samples collected in wine areas compared to those of areas far from all of the culture.
How to explain such exposure rates? According to ANSES and France Public Health, substances spread by winemakers can disperse “beyond the areas treated by drift phenomena, in the form of drops at the time of the application of the products, or a reopening of a fraction of volatilized products after application.”
The health risks not evaluated
To limit the exhibitions of residents of cultures, the two agencies encourage “intervene in the very source of pollution.” Therefore, they recommend “reducing treatments to the necessary strict and minimizing their dispersion to trust in particular in an ambitious implementation of the Ecophyto 2030 strategy.”
Petiriv data provides important information “to objectify exposure to pesticides in wine growth areas, quantify it and identify the factors to reduce it to reduce it,” the agencies said. However, “they do not provide information on the state of health of populations and not only allow to determine the health risks associated with exhibitions.”
Informed to the surface, the vine is among the most treated crops, with the apple or certain flowers. In 2019, 18 treatments on average (substances allowed in organic) were applied, according to the Ministry of Agriculture. It is less than in 2016 (20), but the favorable climate that year may have helped, the ministry emphasizes.
Distance from ten meters between vines and residences
Since 2020, the law has set the minimum distance that is respected between the residences and the areas of propagation in the vineyard to ten meters. The future generations of the NGO, after waste measures in the air, advocate 150 meters.
Although the impacts on the health of pesticides are better known, and after the coverage of the media of several cases (in a Girondin school in 2014 or in the arboricole area in limousine), departmental letters of “good neighborhood” were signed between the agricultural unions and the state.
But local associations have denounced the lack of consultation on these texts. Justice, seized by future generations, has rebuilt them, considering the previous information of residents to insufficient differentials. The State has appeared in the cassation.
The vine, which was unscathed from the centuries of the Middle East, is a very vulnerable plant since the arrival of Mildiou and Oïdium in the United States in the 19th century. The fight against these two fungi is the main concern of the winemakers: the treatments they use are 80% of fungicides.
Source: BFM TV
