SASKATOON – In west-central Saskatchewan, 150 farm families are bleeding, wheezing and remembering.
Men, women and children from three rural municipalities bounded by Kyle, Elrose and Beechy are undergoing physical and mental tests to check whether agricultural chemicals are affecting them. This project is one of three being run under a three-year project called Pecos, the Prairie Ecosystem Study, which has $1.9 million in federal funding.
Researcher Karen M. Semchuk of the Centre for Agricultural Medicine at the University of Saskat-chewan, said medical literature “has indicated quite consistently there may be long-term health effects because of agricultural pesticide exposures.”
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However, most of the past results are based on anecdotes from farmers. The Pecos project is trying to get some objectivity by measuring body and brain functions through blood tests, lung function checks, medical histories and memory and concentration tests.
The people were tested this month, before farming activity, and will be checked again in June, after exposure to farm chemicals. Semchuk said the tests include people of all ages over 12. Town people were included in the study as well as farm people to “get some level of data on those occupationally exposed or bystander/environmentally exposed.”
She said it’s the first time such an intensive general population study has been done on this subject in Canada, which makes it costly and not likely to be repeated.
The focus is not on chronic disease which can creep up after years of exposure to grain dust, or on poisonings that are obvious. Semchuk said the study is checking the effect of a lower level of exposure that everyone in a farming area gets and whether there are measurable and immediate differences in their health.
The study report will be filed in March 1997 to each RM and town council, plus the individuals involved.
“I’ve been totally overwhelmed by the community support,” said Semchuk.
RM and town councillors visited every farmstead and household in the area last fall with a health questionnaire and recruited people for the testing phase. She said it has been “a nice gesture of collaboration.”
The other two projects in the Pecos study are on the natural ecology of the area and the socio-economic influences of farming on the land and community development. There are 57 scientists and 30 graduate students from the universities of Regina and Saskatchewan involved in the three-year study.
