C’est un communiqué de l’Agence régionale de santé (ARS) des Hauts-de-France qui avait alerté toute une région balayée par les champs de betteraves. Le géant allemand de la chimie BASF a assuré mercredi que les résidus d’un pesticide retrouvé dans l’eau du robinet de plusieurs communes des Hauts-de-France, dont certaines placées sous surveillance par les autorités, ne présentaient pas de danger pour la santé.
"BASF hears the questions of consumers but wants to be reassuring with regard to the health risk", given a "reassuring assessment" carried out by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) in 2007, declared Jean-Marc Petat, the group's director of sustainable agriculture and communication in France.
“In parallel with this assessment”, “we follow the life cycle of our active substances very closely, in conjunction with the authorities, with a team of dedicated experts, particularly in the field”, he added.
Chloridazone is a herbicide used for beet weed control until 2020, which BASF discovered in 1960. The molecule fell into the public domain "in the 2000s" and has since "been produced by many generic companies in addition to BASF,” said Marc Petat.
The Hauts-de-France Regional Health Agency announced on September 15 that it had placed 45 municipalities in the region - 13,500 inhabitants - under reinforced surveillance, whose levels of chloridazone metabolites (a residual by-product of chloridazone) in drinking water are particularly high.
A product no longer approved since 2020
Tap water will be analyzed “every 15 days until the end of September”.
Depending on the results, the ARS could recommend to the prefectures "restrictions on the consumption of tap water", she said.
Sixty other municipalities, at slightly lower rates, will be placed under enhanced surveillance in the fall.
For the ARS, these controls respond to a “precautionary principle”.
“In France, we are extremely cautious.
This is the first time that we have taken so many measures for a metabolite that we do not know, ”insisted Thomas Campeaux, the prefect of Aisne, the department mainly affected.
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The National Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety (ANSES) has been instructed to set a maximum concentration value for chloridazone metabolites, to replace the 3µg/L set on a transitional basis by the government. .
The product has not been approved since December 31, 2019, but stocks could still be sold out until May 2020, explained Marc Petat.
BASF stopped production of chloridazone in 2017. The group then "did not wish to file a new registration file at European level", its profitability being deemed insufficient, he added.