PESTICIDE-INJURY SUPPORT

While acute pesticide injury is usually treated in toxicology units, the long term after effects of both acute and chronic pesticide injury can be complex, varied and far reaching. Pesticide-injury victims can continue to suffer symptoms long after the primary exposure, including reduced capacity to metabolise low levels of pesticides.

Living with hypersensitivities to pesticides in a world where such chemicals are increasingly ubiquitous can make life very difficult for sufferers, especially since the lifelong and often intergenerational impacts of pesticide exposure are poorly incorporated into the teaching within medical schools of traditional toxicology.

Acute pesticide injury can leave people with hypersensitivities to much lower levels of pesticides and other synthetic chemicals than the population at large. Sometimes this is referred to as Toxicant Induced Loss of Tolerance (TILT).

Pesticide exposure is a public health matter but also a disability rights and health equality issue: the ubiquity of pesticides can present accessibility barriers to housing and other basic amenities for people who are disproportionately affected by low-level pesticide residues.

Some of these major gaps are being addressed more recently in new research directions encompassed by Exposome and Ecological Public Health discourse (see separate page here), but direct clinical care remains scant and inadequate. See below for charities and organisations that offer important sources of information and support.

Pesticide hypersensitivity can form part of broader chronic health conditions such as ME/CFS, Mitochondrial disorders, and Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS). The recently updated NICE Guidelines for ME/CFE include a section on the role of chemical hypersensitivities in ME/CFS, as do the major charities supporting people with this and related conditions.