Andrea Rother, University of Cape Town

South Africa’s townships – urban areas created for black people under apartheid – have long experienced problems with massive pest infestations and the selling of pesticides on the streets and in informal markets.

Street pesticides are poisonous substances that are legally registered for agricultural uses but are decanted illegally into unlabelled beverage bottles or packets for home use. Or they might be illegally packaged pesticides imported into South Africa and not registered for use.

The dangers of these substances have been in the news lately with the deaths of more than 20 children who were exposed to them. On 21 November the government announced a national disaster related to food-borne illnesses.

As an environmental health researcher I started looking into the problem of street pesticides in several townships in Cape Town in 2008.

Analysing unlabelled pesticides is difficult, but the laboratory managed to identify active ingredients from three highly hazardous classes: organophosphates, carbamates and pyrethroids.

My research found they were being sold by informal vendors in markets and at taxi ranks and on trains. The pesticides were being acquired from agricultural cooperatives, garden shops and middlemen.

Since then I have published research papers and presented evidence to government that children were dying from ingestion of these pesticides.

Blame game

It was only after national outrage was sparked by the tragic deaths of six children in Naledi, Soweto in October 2024 after they’d eaten snacks from an informal shop that this issue started to get the attention it has needed for nearly 20 years.

A vicious blame game erupted after the death of the Naledi children.

Owners of these informal shops, known as spaza shops, were arrested and victimised. Aldicarb, a banned pesticide, was blamed. Accusations were also directed at northern bordering countries, porous borders, criminals and bio-security.

Government toxicology results, however, found that the Naledi children had died from ingesting Terbufos, a highly toxic organophosphate pesticide, legally sold in South Africa for agricultural use.

The reality is that access to highly hazardous pesticides is a problem in South Africa. The focus is now on Terbufos, but there will be and are already other agricultural pesticides (especially organophosphates) killing children. Access needs to be tightened and residents living with pest problems need low-toxic solutions.

Tragedy repeating itself

A year ago, in 2023, two forensic toxicologists and I published a paper showing that out of 50 children whose cause of death was examined with toxicological tests in one mortuary, 29 had died from Terbufos.

Four others had died from the organophosphates methamidophos and diazinon.

This was for one of 16 mortuaries in the Western Cape province. Of these deaths, 42.6% were children under five years and 40.7% were adolescents between 15 and 18.

We also found that in South Africa, before the Naledi tragedy, access to comprehensive and quick toxicological results for pesticide deaths was limited.

Pesticide mortuary data is not provided on a regular basis to those regulating agricultural pesticides. Government laboratories are also stretched and lack the capacity to quickly test the cause of these deaths.

This means we do not have a true picture of how many deaths have been linked to pesticides.

Our plea was for government to standardise death registries and provide support for regular routine toxicological analyses of deaths to get data to policy makers in a timely and systematic way to save children’s lives.

Legal in South Africa, banned elsewhere

Terbufos is legal in South Africa even though it is:

• classified by the World Health Organization as an extremely hazardous (class Ia) pesticide
• recognised and listed by the Rotterdam Convention as a hazardous chemical requiring prior informed consent from parties to the convention (South African authorities, as of 21 July 2024, have had to consent to importing Terbufos)
• banned for use in the European Union since 2009 (although production for export is legal in some EU countries)
• banned in the Southern African Development Community by Angola, Comoros, the DRC, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, Tanzania and Zambia. Botswana’s ban comes into effect on 1 December. Zimbabwe has not imported any Terbufos since 2000.

Terbufos has been a restricted pesticide in South Africa since the end of 2023.

Yet two days before the South African government declared a national disaster, colleagues and I did a quick review of the labels online for Terbufos products being sold in South Africa, and none of them said “restricted use pesticide” as required by law.

Why children are most at risk

Several factors are involved in child deaths from street pesticides.

Firstly, people living in informal areas must contend with high levels of pest infestations – rats, bed bugs, flies and cockroaches.

Because commercially sold legal pesticides have been overused, many pests
are developing resistance and so these products are less effective. Thus there is a market for killing pests with cheap and effective products.

Because of their high toxicity, street pesticides are appealing. And they make money for informal vendors who sell them.

Parents think they are protecting their families and food sources from pests when buying street pesticides. With no label or verbal warnings, people apply them not knowing how dangerous they really are.

Children are particularly vulnerable as their bodies are still developing. They are also small in relation to the potential exposure, touch a lot of surfaces and often have their hands in their mouths.

Lack of enforcement capacity; outdated legislation; multiple jurisdictions

Here are some of the reasons why tragedy such as the one in Naledi can happen:

Outdated legislation: In South Africa, there are legally registered pesticides for home, garden and agricultural uses. These are regulated under an extremely old law, Act 36 of 1947 – also known as the Fertilizers, Farm Feeds, Agricultural Remedies and Stock Remedies Act. Despite several attempts, Act 36 has not been scrapped and replaced with legislation that truly protects all populations.

No protection for children: There is no specific legislation aimed at protecting children from pesticide exposure.

Ineffective enforcement: Act 36 enforcement officers are scarce and so the police have to step in to enforce the law. Environmental health practitioners do a good job following up on the cases that are reported, but they lack capacity and resources. Protecting health from pesticides covers legislation from agriculture, health, labour and environment, creating many legislative gaps.

No public data base: To find out which pesticides are registered or restricted in South Africa, a member of the public has to pay to access a data base run by the pesticide industry. Previously, the department of agriculture housed this database, but it no longer has the financial resources to maintain it.

To save children’s lives, access to these pesticides needs to be eliminated. Industry needs to fund the work of government through higher taxes and fees.

All currently registered highly hazardous pesticides (about 35) ought to be banned with no phase-out periods. Other countries have shown that eliminating highly hazardous pesticides saves lives without jeopardising agricultural production.

Consumers should know that all pesticides are toxic with varying degrees of short- and long-term hazards. Controlling pests without pesticides should be the first step. For an easy-to-read guide see the University of Cape Town’s Low Danger Pest Control Booklet for Communities.

Andrea Rother, Professor and Head of the Environmental Health Division, University of Cape Town

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.