JEDDAH: In response to the fatal pesticide poisoning of two Danish children at Jeddah’s Basateen compound — the latest in a series of deaths attributed to improper use of pesticides — Saudi officials announced that as of yesterday a number of pesticides will be completely banned from the Saudi market. A memo has been sent out to suppliers.
“The use of the pesticides, for which alternatives are available, has been strictly restricted because they are highly toxic,” said Khaled Al-Fohaid, director general of media relations at the Ministry of Agriculture, in a statement to the Saudi Press Agency on Wednesday.
Local papers yesterday published a list of 23 chemicals that the government has pledged to completely remove from the market.
The daily Al-Watan also published a list of 13 products possibly being sold in the Kingdom that contain aluminum phosphide, the compound suspected to have caused Monday’s death of a sixyear- old girl and a three-year-old boy, the children of Hendrik and Dorthe Skad.
Pesticides that contain aluminum phosphide are only to be used by trained professionals at crop transport, storage or processing facilities. The pesticide is useful under those restricted-use conditions because while the gas is toxic it leaves no residue on foodstuffs, such as grain.
The brand names containing aluminum phosphide listed by Al-Watan are: Agriphos, Alfox, Cellophos 75, Celphos, Fumiphos, Hiphos, Masaphos, Quickphos, Phosfume, Phostoxin, Premaphos, Shenphos and Synfume.
The SPA published a list of other chemicals that were included in the circular sent to pesticide companies. The 23 other restricted- use pesticide compounds reported in the local Arabic press are: bromadiolone, carbofuran (in liquid form), chlorpyrifos, ethoprophos, carbaryl, chlorothalonil, demeton-s-methyl, diclofop- methyl, dicofol, dimethoate, benomyl, mancozeb, endosulfan, tetradifon, zineb, methomyl, propargite, propoxur, quintozene, simazine, methiocarb, methoxychlor and oxydemethel-methyl.
Hamoud Al-Ahmadi, manager of a Jeddah-based insect exterminator company, told Al-Watan that despite the crackdown some companies would continue to flaunt the regulations and use the banned chemicals because they are far more effective than pesticides that are deemed safe for domestic use.
“I am not exaggerating when I say 90 percent of the buyers do not know how to use the pesticides or the precautions they should take.
As far as I know they just pour the contents of the bottles inside the house and go elsewhere for one or two days and then come back.
They don’t even warn their neighbors who could be potential victims,” pesticide salesman Abdul Fatah Saad told Al-Watan.
He also described how the black market for aluminum phosphide- based pesticides thrives: Some small traders buy the poison from licensed outlets and then repack them in cheap, unlabeled bottles of five to 10 tablets.
