Half of the world’s farmers are poisoned by pesticides every year, study finds

A new study published in the journal Frontiers in Public Health shows that almost half of the world’s farmers are poisoned by pesticides every year. The researchers looked at data from 2006 to 2023. They found between 402 and 433 million cases of accidental pesticide poisoning each year. That number comes from a global farming population of about 934 million people. When you do the math, about 46 percent of all farmers and farm workers experience a poisoning each year.

The study was commissioned by the Pesticide Action Network, an organization that works to reduce the harm caused by chemicals on farms. The researchers used publicly available data from many countries. They counted every reported case of acute poisoning that happened soon after a farmer was exposed to a pesticide. Acute poisoning means a health problem that appears quickly after the exposure.

The biggest numbers of poisonings were found in southern Asia, followed by southeast Asia and east Africa. In the country of Burkina Faso in west Africa, the study found that almost 84 percent of farmers and farm workers had been poisoned at least once in a year. That is the highest national rate in the world. The study also showed that many other countries in the same regions have high rates, but the data for those countries were lower than Burkina Faso.