Column: "A sense of paranoia is damaging our farming"

WE'RE constantly urged to drink more water, to improve and protect our health.

However, a copy of the chemical parameters and safe levels permitted in drinking water may surprise you.

10ug/litre of arsenic, 50ug/litre of cyanide and 10ug/litre of lead might even seem alarming to some people, but, of course, these levels are shown to be safe because of the tiny quantities involved (10ug = one part per 100 million).

It just goes to show "everything is a poison, nothing is a poison. It depends on the dose".

Chemical names can be frightening, too.

Water is dihydrogen monoxide and I'm taking 20mgs of lercanidipine hydrochloride every morning.

Anhydrous lanolin is applied to a baby’s rash and some fungicides farmers are not allowed to use on crops have been used on sensitive parts of a human's body.

The list of possible hazardous side-effects suggests we shouldn't consume or use anything at all.

Our brilliant health service and doctors prescribe medicines containing all sorts of complicated chemicals which, taken in excess, are extremely hazardous.

However, it depends on the dose and scientists have sensibly balanced risk against hazard.

The queues at the pharmacy shop bear witness to the amazing chemicals we're ready to swallow while not wanting farmers to use anything on their plants.

This is where the debate over agrochemicals used by growers and farmers should really begin.

Thirst quncher - drinking water

As with all chemicals present in our daily lives, the criteria used to assess the safety of agrochemicals used to be identical to that used for every medicine, skin cream etc.

If products appeared too risky or were superseded they were correctly banned.

However, in more recent years the criteria has been changed and all our plant medicines and weed control products are now judged on how hazardous an ingredient is - not how risky it is to use.

Basically, this argument can be used to ban almost every product we use on crops because "everything is a poison".

The paranoia about agrochemicals over other chemicals is apparent when some pressure groups call them 'pesticides'.

In fact, very few are used to kill pests, with most being used to control fungal diseases or weeds.

Paranoia is apparent, too, in the drinking water regulations which allow exactly 100 times more cyanide content than all the combined pesticide levels in it.

That is plainly ridiculous.

This attempt to ban everything to do with efficient food production is beginning to have a real impact on UK production.

Sugar beet and oilseed rape areas are being drastically reduced, while cereal fungicides are allowing more weed infected and diseased crops, drastically reducing yields.

The irony of all this is that home food production has to be replaced by imported goods from abroad, where many of these chemicals are still permitted.

No farmer wants to damage the health of humans, animals or the environment but if the same rules existed across the board their would be no medicines, no skin creams and logically no drinking water.

Let's face it, life is risky and always ends in death.

That's a bad enough thought without living our lives in fear of every imaginable hazard we might face along the way.

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