In 2023, the UK exported 8,500 tonnes of harmful pesticides that are banned from use on British farms, a new investigation from Unearthed and Public Eye has found.
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Among the exports were thousands of tonnes of diquat, a weedkiller banned in the UK in 2018 because of the high risk it poses to people living near fields where it is sprayed, which is linked to a rising number of poisonings in southern Brazil.
Other shipments of banned pesticides last year included enough of the notorious bee-killing neonicotinoid insecticide thiamethoxam to spray an area bigger than England.
The findings come from analysis of documents submitted to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) by companies when exporting banned chemicals.
These were obtained under freedom of information laws by Greenpeace’s investigative journalism unit, Unearthed, and the Swiss NGO Public Eye.
Almost all (98%) of the toxic pesticides were shipped by the UK subsidiary of agrochemical giant, Syngenta, which continues to produce banned chemicals at its manufacturing plant in Huddersfield. Loopholes in UK law mean that when a pesticide is banned here because of the dangers it poses, the ban does not extend to its production or export.
This leaves companies, such as Syngenta, free to continue manufacturing these products in the UK to be sold overseas.
France and Belgium have both introduced bans on the export of banned pesticides and the European Commission also committed to ending the practice of manufacturing banned chemicals for export.
However, so far, the UK has never taken any steps to restrict its own cross-border trade in these products, nor made any commitment to doing so.
Syngenta’s UK shipments of diquat last year made up 60% (5,123 tonnes) of the total exports in 2023, making it the UK’s most exported banned pesticide last year.
More than half of that total went to Brazil.
Prior to Brexit, the UK was the EU’s biggest exporter of banned pesticides, driven almost entirely by shipments by Syngenta of paraquat, a deadly weed killer responsible for tens of thousands of poisoning deaths globally.
However, following a wave of new national bans in countries including Brazil, and Syngenta’s decision to pull out of the paraquat market in some other countries, UK paraquat exports have dropped to a quarter of their previous levels.
Farmers in Brazil are now using diquat, which is chemically related to paraquat, to replace it.
Syngenta exported nearly 400 tonnes of thiamethoxam from the UK - to countries including Côte d'Ivoire, Ukraine and Morocco. ■
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