Critiques of the Spray Campaigns

Many complaints about the Spray Campaigns are received for the  U.S. State Department. This department is interested for the spray campaigns because many people are concerned for all the economics and human health problems, equal that all the environmental problems….. 

Some people are counter of the spray campaigns because are part of “la guerrilla”, and these are supported by drug traffickers and some people in power. to protect illicit crops and therefore have a significant interest in maintaining opposition to the spray program, especially because their illicit crops are affected by the glyphosate.

The other people that don’t support the spray campaigns do so for logical reasons, but the principal reason is that they are concerned for all the economics, human health and environmental problems.  Some studies say that the combinations of toxic and other chemicals in crops good, expose the country to a significant illness, the results would see in the near future. 

The people has invited the U.S. government to influence the handling of these projects spray. They require that the Spray Campaigns are better handled and they insist on make products with a different chemicals combination.

The Human Impacts of the Aerial Eradication Program

Numerous individuals and community groups in Colombia have registered formal complaints about adverse effects of the spray campaigns. Many of these complaints were reviewed and summarized by the government. The complaints say:  aerial eradication has seriously affected weak and marginalized communities of poor farmers, Indigenous Peoples, and settlers. Hundreds of complaints from these communities were registered with local and national offices of the Colombian Human Rights Ombudsman. Aerial spraying of the herbicide has caused eye, respiratory, skin and digestive ailments; destroyed subsistence crops; sickened domestic animals; and contaminated water supplies.

Expected ecological effects of herbicide spray campaigns in Colombia

Many individuals and institutions have expressed concern about damage to ecosystems resulting from the spray campaigns. For example, in 2001, a report from Colombia’s Comptroller- General's office reported that the spray campaigns were damaging the environment and failing to curb drug production. The report stated that “the majority of the environmental damages are irreversible,” and called for a halt to spraying until scientists were able to study the herbicide's environmental effects.

These effects of glyphosate herbicides can vary significantly depending on the circumstances of exposure. The U.S. Embassy states in a November, 2001 "fact sheet" that the herbicides used in the spray campaigns are "practically nontoxic to fish."64 In fact, there is reason to believe that the mixture as sprayed in Colombia can have serious adverse effects on fish life, especially since exposure circumstances in Colombia are quite different from those under which tests have been conducted. Effects of glyphosate and Roundup on fish vary widely depending on species affected, temperature, and other factors. In general, formulations including a surfactant are more toxic to fish than pure glyphosate. The toxicity of surfactant ingredients can vary according to the hardness and acidity of the water where it is sprayed. Perhaps most importantly for tropical regions, toxicity of Roundup to some fish has been found to increase with increasing water temperature. 65 Little to no information is available on the likely effects of the specific exposure conditions that exist in Colombia, but it is plausible to expect that effects on fish would be more serious than is predicted based on experiences in temperate climates.

Reports from the ground: Human health effects

Major U.S. and international media have reported frequently over the past year and a half on widespread impacts of spraying on human health. For example, in the southern Colombian province of Putumayo, a representative of the indigenous Cofán people was quoted by the BBC as saying that the people of his community were suffering from headaches, fever, and rashes associated with the spraying. Also in Putumayo, the New York Times reported that the Health Department received many complaints of dizziness, diarrhea, vomiting, itchy skin, red eyes, and headaches in the aftermath of aerial spraying. Skin reactions were reported to be particularly prevalent among children.16 In the department of Nariño, a physician in the town of Aponte reported that aerial spraying on indigenous people’s lands had caused “an epidemic” of “rash, fever, diarrhea and eye infections.”

Conclusions from the use of herbicides in Colombia

• Adverse effects of the spray campaigns in Colombia have been widely reported by affected.
• Communities, Colombian government authorities, and outside observers. Many of these effects are, in fact, predictable based on publicly available information about toxicological properties of glyphosate herbicides and standard guidelines for these herbicides’ use.
• The crop losses and environmental impacts, also broadly reported, are natural outcomes of the widespread aerial spraying of powerful and concentrated herbicides.
• Although certain reported effects of the spraying, such as widespread livestock deaths and some of the most serious human health impacts, are not clearly explained by known toxicological properties of the chemicals known to be used in the spray campaigns, several “unknowns” in the situation may contribute to these effects.
• The great number of reports that have been made regarding the health and environmental impacts of spraying, the diversity of the sources, and the detail of the documentation, justify, in our opinion, calls for a moratorium on spraying. Such a moratorium would allow time to review crop eradication policies and study health and environmental effects.