Environment Tasmania is concerned because the recent draft of the Tasmanian Veterinary Chemicals (Control of Use) Regulations enables dangerous chemicals to contaminate our land, waterways and food, resulting in adverse effects on environmental and public health.

In a submission to Tasmania’s draft ‘control of use’ AgVet regulations made on July 20, 2011, Environment Tasmania, EDO Tasmania and the Tasmanian Public and Environmental Health Network called upon the state government to prioritise protecting the health of Tasmanians and its environment, and work to improve Tasmania’s ‘clean and green’ image when reviewing the submissions and the regulations.

Currently the draft regulations still allow the spraying of triazines such as simazine, which have long been known to cause harmful effects and glyphosate herbicides which have been long linked to birth defects in humans and animals and other human health risks.  More recently, the monitoring of fish hatcheries has raised significant concern as studies show that spray-drift from many agricultural chemicals can cause mortality, larval deformity and larval abnormalities across fish species.

Only demonstrably safe AgVet chemicals and safe methods of application should be used in Tasmania and aerial spraying of these chemicals is not a safe option.  

The state and federal governments must start to seriously address chemical risks in order to protect our public and environmental health. It’s time to listen to scientists and only allow the use of chemicals that have been adequately tested and proven to be safe. EU regulations based on this model led to the banning of 77 dangerous pesticides that are still currently used in Tasmania and we are being left behind.

Tasmania can be a national and global leader by taking action to adopt safe chemical use laws and regulations. 

Environment Tasmania the Tasmanian Public and Environmental Health Network and the EDO Tasmania have joined national organisations including consumer group Choice, WWF and the National Toxics Network. High profile advocates such as Australian scientist Tim Flannery and US environmental campaigner Erin Brockovich are also asking for safer chemical laws in Australia.  

The submissions are available on request.

Why Agricultural Chemicals are harmful to environmental and human health

Common agricultural chemicals include pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, fertilisers, solvents, fuels and veterinary chemicals. Many of these are dangerous and some commonly used pesticides, herbicides, fungicides in particular have been designed disrupt biological systems. This is a problem because this biological disruption ultimately has an effect on the biological systems of other organisms including humans.

Chemicals used in agriculture take a long time to break down and when they are applied, more so through aerial spraying than ground spraying, they can drift hundreds of kilometres.

The residues of agricultural chemicals make their way into our waterways, oceans, schools and homes. Residues remain on the food that we and eat and are found in our drinking water. This is of great concern as science is showing us more and more that even low doses of many commonly used agricultural chemicals have adverse short- term and long-term effects on our environmental and human health.

For more information see Reports and Publications.