Ten employees at Syngenta Kauai were taken to the hospital when they walked onto a corn field 20 hours after the application of chlorpyrifos, reports The Civil Beat. Typically, workers are supposed to wait 24 hours before going back into the fields after a chlorpyrifos spray. Three of the workers stayed overnight at the hospital, but all have since been released and cleared for work.
A representative from Syngenta told The Civil Beat, “As far as we’re concerned, [chloropyrifos] is still registered as safe as long as it’s used in accordance with the label.”
Chlorpyrifos is undergoing a safety review by the Environmental Protection Agency and may soon be banned, but for now Syngenta and the other agro-chemical companies raising and testing GMO seed corn on Kauai (Dow, BASF and DuPont) spray it, along with atrazine, paraquat (both prohibited in Europe) and glyphosate (RoundUp). The research arm of the World Health Organization said last year that glyphosate, the most widely used herbicide in the world, is “probably carcinogenic in humans.”
Not only do the companies use chemicals, but a study by the Center for Food Safety said they use 17-times more restricted-use insecticides per acre than is typical on mainland cornfields.
For more than three years, Hawaiian advocates have fought for greater protection from pesticides. But attempts at forcing companies to announce when they spray and to develop mandatory buffer zones have largely failed, in part because seed corn is one of Hawaii’s biggest cash crops, says The Guardian. Legislators may be wary of getting in the way of profits.