An arborist who died in 2018 obtained post-mortem recognition of the occupational origin of his Parkinson’s disease on Monday.
Justice recognized on Monday the occupational origin of Parkinson’s disease of an arborist who died last year at the age of 74. Employed for 37 years in a company in Loiré, Maine-et-Loire, this gentleman has spent his whole life maintaining orchards, that is to say, pruning trees according to the seasons and the characteristics specific to their species, to participate in the harvest, to prepare the soil, etc. As a result, he was exposed to pesticides at least 5 days out of 7, for nearly 40 years. “He did not handle the phytosanitary products himself. But like all the employees at the time, he worked in the rows during and after the treatments”, explains to AFP his brother and former legal guardian Michel Geslin.
A victory that must “evolve the legislation”
It was the latter who took the administrative steps to have his brother’s disease recognized as work-related, after a first diagnosis of “Alzheimer’s type” disorders in 2008, reclassified a few years later as Parkinson’s disease. “This recognition was refused to us for the first time in 2017 because the initial certificate from his attending physician had only mentioned ‘memory problems’, he explains. Even though the Mutualité sociale agricole had all expert opinions.” Then, Michel Geslin obtained a second refusal in 2018. It was finally the opinion of the regional committee for the recognition of occupational diseases in Brittany, which is making things happen.
Michel Besnard, spokesperson for the support group for victims of pesticides in the West, told AFP that it was“an emblematic case because it shows that the agricultural social protection organisations, although perfectly informed, prefer to let it go. For anyone who wants to have their disease recognized, it is an obstacle course”. The link between occupational diseases and pesticides, even if they are increasingly proven by science, remains little recognized on the legal level. For Michel Geslin, this victory must contribute “to changing the legislation on occupational diseases linked to phytosanitary products, so that what happened to (his) brother no longer happens”.
Farmers are among the most exposed
Parkinson’s disease is the neurological disease that has increased the most between 1990 and 2015: the number of its victims has doubled. At the end of 2015, the number of Parkinson’s patients treated was around 160,000 in France, with around 25,000 new cases per year. 17% of new cases were under the age of 65. According to Santé Publique France, the number of people with Parkinson’s disease will have increased by 56% in 2030. Farmers and local residents have a 10% higher risk of contracting the disease, particularly from pesticides.
In 2012, Bruno Le Maire – then Minister of Agriculture – officially recognized Parkinson’s disease as an occupational disease of farmers, in a decree published in the Official newspaper. According to the text, farmers must have been exposed to pesticides for at least 10 years and have felt the first symptoms one year after the end of this exposure for it to be recognized as an occupational disease.
In 2016, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) carried out a review of the literature published from 1990 to 2015. Several classes of chemicals were involved, including pesticides. Notorious pesticides feature in the list drawn up by EFSA, such as the organochlorine used in DDT (a synthesized chemical with insecticidal and acaricidal properties) or pyrethroids (a powerful insecticide). However, these two molecules are widely used to fight against mosquito vectors of infectious diseases.
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