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Pesticide and fertilizer sprayer in Brandenburg (archive image):
Photo: Patrick Pleul / DPA
According to a study, pesticides used in agriculture and their breakdown products spread for miles through the air.
This is the result of a measurement at 163 locations published by the Alliance for Agriculture Appropriate for Grandchildren and the Munich Environmental Institute.
The President of the Federal Environment Agency (UBA), Dirk Messner, considers the controls required by law to be sensible, as do new EU guidelines for the approval process for pesticides.
During the measurements throughout Germany, at least five and up to 34 active pesticide substances and their breakdown products were found at around three quarters of the sites.
Even on the tip of the Brocken in the Harz National Park, twelve pesticides were detectable, announced the alliance and the environmental institute.
A total of 138 substances were found across Germany, 30 percent of which were no longer or never approved at the time of measurement.
The plant-killing agent glyphosate has been detected in all regions of Germany and far away from potential fields of origin.
According to the client, pesticides were measured in the air from March to November 2019 for the study.
Locations within a radius of less than 100 up to more than 1000 meters from potential sources were examined;
in cities and in rural areas, in conventional and organic agricultural landscapes and in various protected areas.
The data were collected with the help of newly developed passive collection devices, from filter mats in ventilation systems of buildings and through the analysis of beehives and tree bark.
Farmers, beekeepers and private individuals have also sent in samples.
Danger to organic fields
Karl Bär, agricultural expert at the Munich Environment Institute, called the results of the study "shocking".
Pesticides ended up "in natural areas that are worth protecting, on organic fields and in the air we breathe".
Boris Frank, chairman of the Alliance for Agriculture Suitable for Grandchildren, criticized in particular that organically farmed fields were contaminated.
"Whole harvests are lost like this."
Both called for an immediate ban on the five most common pesticides, including glyphosate.
The EU Commission must gradually ban all chemical-synthetic pesticides by 2035.
If their crops are contaminated, organic farmers would have to be compensated through a compensation fund - the fund should fill ten percent of the German sales of the pesticide manufacturers.
UBA President Messner said the study provided valuable data on the spread of pesticides through the air.
Many active ingredients are found almost everywhere in Germany.
Most of them were among the top ten best-selling active ingredients.
The study makes no statement about the health effects, the UBA is not responsible for it.
The determined concentrations of the substances do not pose any immediate danger to animals and plants - they are "predominantly well below what we would allow in the immediate vicinity".
Agricultural Association calls study "alarmist"
Nevertheless, the long-distance transport of the substances caused certain worries for the UBA, explained Messner.
It is conceivable that the active ingredients combine in a different location and act as a cocktail.
This is only partially taken into account in the approval process - new guidelines would have to be drawn up at EU level.
Federal Environment Minister Svenja Schulze (SPD) said on Twitter that she would continue to campaign for more organic farming and fewer pesticides.
The Agricultural Industry Association (IVA), which represents the interests of the agrochemical industry, stated that the finds were "apparently rare" and that the quantities detected were "so minimal that they are harmless to humans and the environment".
Here a topic is "artificially exaggerated", criticized IVA managing director Frank Gemmer;
the publication was "alarmist".
Today any substance can be detected in trace levels.
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