The U.N. world food body said on Wednesday more than 500,000 tons of aging pesticide waste was scattered around the globe, with nearly all developing countries under threat. According to FAO, the quantities of these obsolete pesticides in Africa and the Middle East are estimated at over 100,000 tons, in Asia at over 200,000 and in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union at more than 200,000 tons. For Latin America FAO is still preparing inventories. Pesticides usually have an expiry date of two years after manufacture. Yet waste has accumulated over more than 30 years and products are being added continuously, FAO said.
Many stocks originate from donations provided under various development assistance programs.
The waste sites contain some of the most dangerous insecticides like the Persistent Organic Pollutants aldrin, chlordane, DDT, dieldrin, endrin and heptachlor, which have been banned in most countries, and organophosphates, FAO said. Last month FAO officials accompanied by a Reuters correspondent visited Ethiopia, where they found metal drums leaking toxic waste at obsolete pesticide dumps in residential areas. Ethiopian and FAO officials said the build-up, dating back 30 or more years, was due to bad management of pesticide deliveries by the government and donors, and unscrupulous marketing of pesticides that often were not needed. It said that if some of the products could be used, it was far better to apply them to protect crops against pests and diseases in famine-prone countries like Ethiopia than to ship them to Finland for incineration. A clean-up operation by Finnish hazardous waste treatment company Ekokem began last month in Ethiopia, where FAO estimates that almost 3,000 tons of obsolete pesticide waste stored at nearly 1,000 sites have accumulated.