10 Syngenta Employees Sent to Hospital in Kauai Following Pesticide Use
Is there a connection?
by Christina Sarich
After being exposed to an insecticide called chlorpyrifos
only 20 hours prior, 10 Syngenta (a biotech company) field workers were
rushed to the hospital after serious adverse health conditions arose.
[1]
The Kauai agricultural workers were exposed to the insecticide chlorpyrifos, used on corn, which is currently under consideration for a ban
by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). More than 3.5 tons
of the pesticide were used in Hawaii in 2014 despite concerns over its
environmental effects, as well as adverse health implications. The
insecticide was also recently found in what were once considered
protected water sources.
Joshua Uyehara, Syngenta Hawaii’s continuous nursery site manager,
said in a phone interview that a field supervisor realized that the
employees shouldn’t have been in the field within a few minutes after
they entered it. Syngenta would not tell anyone what symptoms the 10
workers endured, but they were severe enough that after taking them to
Syngenta’s offices and ‘cleaning them up,’ they still needed to go to
the hospital.
