Dying in debt
Ecologists in Action and Pesticide Action Network Europe have published an explanatory document in February this year. The report analyses the situation of rivers in the Spanish State. The management and control of the basin of each river lies with the administrations known as the Hydrographic Confederation. These confederations carried out two studies to find out the pesticides that could be found in the rivers in 2012 and 2016 and have completed the report with the results of them.
The results are shocking. Many pesticides, mostly insecticides and herbicides, have been detected. 70% of them, which cannot be used throughout the European Union or in Spain, are banned. And it's a direct link, a more intensive agriculture and more traces of pesticides in the rivers.
More than half (55%) of the pesticides found in the 2016 studies are endocrine disruptors or there are serious suspicions, that is, many substances that affect our hormonal system. As a result, State rivers are called hormonal rivers.
As far as we are concerned, on the one hand the data on the Ebro River have been presented and, on the other hand, in the only group that have called the Eastern Cantabrian River, the data on the CAPV rivers. The results of both are also disappointing: Studies of the Ebro point out that it is the second most polluted river in the State, while those of the CAV are the third. Considering that Spain is the country that uses the most pesticides throughout Europe (78,818 tonnes in 2014), the trail we have in our rivers is worrying. That is why the whole of our environment and food are not large. Of the 21 substances found in the Ebro, 18 are mostly illegal, which has already been banned. There are 15 of the 17 findings of immigrants in CAV waters. As if it were not enough, the second most detected product in the CAPV rivers is glyphosate, one of the worst in our health.
Against this background the proposals are not from the other world: enforcing the law, preventing endocrine disruptors, limiting the use of pesticides (50% in Denmark and France in ten years), etc. We must die, but the key is how to do it.
