From The Sunday TimesNovember 16, 2008There’s no escape from Georgina Downs, the poisoned ‘Pesticide Nun’Last week Georgina Downs won a landmark case that could halt crop spraying. Shetells John-Paul Flintoff of her dogged campaignDavid Miliband, the secretary of state, was nobbled on his way out of the loo.Professor David Coggon, chairman of a government advisory committee, was pinneddown in a hotel bar. For those responsible for government policy on pesticidesthere has been no escape in recent years from Georgina Downs.Now aged 35, she has for much of her life been exposed to a horrific cocktail ofpesticides that was regularly sprayed on farmland beside her family home inChichester, West Sussex. The spraying started when she was 11 and continues tothis day - seven years on from when she first decided to devote herself full-timeto making the countryside safer for the people who live in it.Now, at last, she has reason to hope that she has made a difference. On FridayDowns won a ground-breaking legal case that represents probably the mostsignificant setback for the agricultural chemicals industry in 50 years. Thejudicial review found that the government had failed to protect people,particularly rural residents, from exposure to pesticides. This judgment - againstthe Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) - represents asignificant breakthrough in a crusade that has already been compared with earliercampaigns to prove the health dangers of tobacco and asbestos.Some farmers believe that the ruling may even lead to pesticides being banned –and that crop yields will fall significantly as a result (although the SoilAssociation says organic farming can actually produce greater yields).Downs has now called on the government to ban spraying immediately near homes,schools and other public areas. The government is expected to appeal but for themoment she is enjoying her victory - the culmination of a campaign fought withextraordinary determination, despite appalling health problems.She doesn’t like to talk about them, preferring to emphasise the importance ofavoiding similar poisonings in future, but she has been in hospital for severemuscle wasting, leg pain and other chronic symptoms. Her father hinted darkly onthe court steps that her health is worse than anyone realises; doctors say she hasthe brittle bones more usually found in a woman of 90.For years the Downs family had no idea what was ailing her. Symptoms initiallyincluded blisters inside her mouth and throat; in 1991 her legs gave way. “I wasabsolutely devastated. I didn’t know what was going wrong. My body completelyfailed me,” she tells me.Then, one day, she happened to look out of a window and noticed that theneighbouring farmer was spraying his crops. Wondering if this might be the cause,she asked him to give her family notice before he sprayed in future, but hetypically gave only 10 minutes’ warning. (Bee-keepers, the judge drily noted, get48 hours.) In any case, the sheer number of times that he sprayed his crops ruledout much chance of getting out of the way - last year’s salad crop alone wassprayed 30 times in six months.So she made a complaint to the Health and Safety Executive. But although officialsadmitted privately that they wouldn’t like spraying to take place near their ownhomes, they were unable to prevent it because the farmer was acting within thelaw. The information distributed with pesticides urges farmworkers to wear safety
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