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Our Voice in Action |
The Ontario Pesticide Ban: A Victory for Advocacy at OPHA
by Connie Uetrecht, Executive Director, OPHA
The Ontario government's recent move to reduce exposure to toxic chemicals by banning the sale and cosmetic use of pesticides and standardize the rules for pesticide use across the province creates a set of environmental protection laws that have been greeted as among the toughest in North America.
OPHA is proud to have played a significant role along with many other organizations that were among the first to alert the public and the government to the danger, and to call for a ban on the cosmetic use of pesticides as a prudent measure to protect the health of families in Ontario. OPHA Environmental Workgroup Chair, Louise Aubin, was particularly instrumental in promoting OPHA's interests in the coalition of groups that supported the ban.
As public health practitioners, this legislation represents a triumph of the precautionary principle and the preservation of healthy environments of over narrow commercial, aesthetic, and parochial interests. The debate over the cosmetic use of pesticides focused for too many years around the issue of the search for conclusive scientific proof of harm. Fortunately, the public health standard called for something much simpler to establish — sufficient suggestive evidence of health or environmental threats from pesticide use when there is no appreciable benefit warrants action to protect the public. OPHA adopted its position paper on this topic in 2001. Essentially, this pesticide legislation allows families to keep children from harm while they explore their environments and find safe places to play.
One of the primary virtues of this new legislation is the uniformity that it brings to a patchwork of municipal laws across the province. Some municipalities had moved to solve the problem by creating their own pesticide by-laws. However, this created untenable situations in which health and safety standards varied considerably among neighborhoods across the province, and commercial and political interests often determined the stringency or leniency of the laws in some municipalities. Furthermore, municipal bans did not address sales of pesticides for individual use. Under the new legislation, individuals will not be able to purchase harmful pesticides for their own use.
The province-wide legislation, which takes effect next spring, effectively balances the suspected harms and potential benefits of pesticide use. It will not affect pesticides used for farming or forestry. Golf courses will still be able to use pesticides but must meet specific conditions designed to minimize environmental impacts. Pesticides will still be used for managing health and safety concerns such as controlling mosquitoes which carry diseases like the West Nile Virus.
As the population becomes more and more aware of the potential risks in our environment, not only to the health of adults but to the health of our children, it is incumbent on public health professionals to vocalize their concerns and warn the public so that effective preventive actions can be taken which decrease the pressure on the treatment system and serve to benefit the both the health and the economy of the province.
As public health professionals, care must be taken to look beyond simple individual behavioral determinants of health risks to ensure that broader determinants of health — the built environment, the natural environment and social justice issues are accounted for in any assessments of risk to population health and well-being.
The ban on cosmetic use of pesticides is one significant victory in this regard. OPHA hopes to apply its lessons to other concerns such as the emerging childhood obesity epidemic and other issues.
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