How Australia’s Loose Pesticide Rules Are Harming Its Environment and People

Despite an increasing number of countries restricting harmful chemicals in agriculture and food, Australia is continually falling behind. 

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In the world today, an ever-growing list of nations have banned harmful pesticides such as paraquat and atrazine, yet they are still widely used in Australian agriculture. Australian food regulation is also highly permissive, enabling heavy metals like lead as well as toxic chemicals like Chlorpyrifos in foods at rates 50 times higher than the permitted European limit for some food categories. This has caused widespread chronic exposure – in 2012, the levels of Chlorpyrifos were over 85 times higher than the levels in Japanese children and 20 times as much as the US population. 

Since then, restrictions have significantly broadened for that chemical, but many food categories are still not sufficiently protected. Currently, 60 food categories have restrictions for Chlorpyrifos, but only 17 of them are as low as they need to be.

Pesticides and Herbicides in Agriculture

Pesticides are chemicals used in agriculture to kill weeds, herbs, insects and other pests – their use in agriculture can improve crop productivity by 20-50%. Although some pesticides are classed as unlikely to be hazardous by the World Health Organisation (WHO), many range from slightly hazardous to extremely hazardous to human health and the environment. 

Regions such as the European Union, through a precautionary approach, identifies chemicals that are inherently harmful and hazardous and restricts them unless proven safe. 

On the other hand, Australia, through its regulator the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA), adopts a “risk-based” approach designed to manage exposure and avoid outright bans of harmful pesticides. 

Australia allows many pesticides that are banned in both the EU and the UK (see table 1 for a non-exhaustive list). Even though Australia has tightened controls on many of these pesticides, they remain legal under specific uses instead of being banned outright.Four pesticides in particular are banned across dozens of countries but allowed in Australia: Paraquat, Atrazine, Methomyl and Chlorpyrifos. Paraquat is banned in over 74 countries, including China, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and several African and South American countries.

A number of the pesticides in Table 1 are endocrine disruptors, meaning they interfere with the endocrine system, negatively impacting male and female hormones (such as lowering testosterone in men) and potentially causing infertility. 

Pesticide contamination in Australia has also been found to be associated with poor ecological status in numerous streams and water systems. Pesticides have had further harmful effects on the environment as they have weakened the productivity of Australia’s coral and tropical seagrass, killed around 250,000 bees in a single incident in New South Wales, and harmed Australian native carnivores via rodent pesticides.

Additives, Heavy Metals and Weak Food Regulation

It is not only Australia’s pesticide regulator that avoids a cautionary approach. The country’s food regulator also fails to cautiously regulate chemicals in food such as additives and heavy metal contaminants. 

Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ), the national food regulator for Australia and New Zealand, has acknowledged that some of the colors and food additives permitted here are banned in other countries. FSANZ has provided a number of justifications for its differing positions, such as countries having “different dietary exposure”. In 2015, FSANZ tested canned and bottled fruits following reports of high metals in some products. The regulator conducted a survey on those products and found that the level of lead was “very small” and below maximum levels permitted by Australian regulation. Australian regulation protects Australian food by setting maximum levels of heavy metal that can contaminate food, such as lead, tin and copper.

The maximum lead levels permitted by FSANZ are based on the international standard set by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), known as Codex Alimentarius.

The idea that there was a “safe level” of lead exposure for children – a principle used to set international maximum levels – was debunked by new findings. In 1986, the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (UN JECFA) established a provisional weekly tolerable intake (PWTI) of 25 µg/kg bodyweight. This level was based on studies that found reduced intellectual performance only at blood lead concentrations above 5.7 µg/dl, which was then considered a “safety threshold.” However, in 2010, JECFA reversed its stance after concluding that even the existing tolerable intake was associated with a decrease of 3 IQ points in children. The panel subsequently withdrew the weekly limit, stating it could “no longer be health protective.”

The European Food Safety Authority’s scientific panel, also rejected the threshold previously considered safe, recognizing that lead is harmful to people even at very low levels. 

As Low as Reasonably Achievable

Since evidence has demonstrated that there is no safety threshold for lead exposure, food regulators in Europe and North America have taken steps to continually tighten lead restrictions. In 2021, the EU lowered the lead limits previously set in 2006 for various food products. The limit was further lowered in 2023 in a range of food categories from fruits to baby food. The US Food and Drug Administration has also implemented a closer-to-zero action plan aimed at progressively reducing lead limits as close to zero as possible. Evidence continues to pile up, with recent studies demonstrating that any blood lead level above 0 can cause cognitive deficits. Australia, however, continues to lean on maximum lead levels based on outdated research, with regulations affecting just 11 categories of food (see table 2).

The Australian food regulator claims that the maximum levels for lead are “set to protect public health and safety”, whereas in reality, they are a compromise between public health and economic objectives. This is because the Australian government has required FSANZ to set maximum levels that avoid “undue disruptions of food and feed production and trade” – a  principle that originated in the international standard Codex Alimentarius itself. 

The methodology used by Codex Alimentarius for setting maximum levels has significant problems, creating a downstream impact on the minimum standards that national regulators will set. 

Despite stated aspirations of “protect[ing] public health”, in practicality, the maximum limits are mainly designed to fit the market instead of protecting the public from health risks. An FAO report showed that with respect to maximum levels of contaminants in food, there was general support for a “maximum cut-off at 5%”. It means that when the international body sets a maximum level, it aims to set one that is achievable by 95% of products on the market, in a bid to avoid overly disrupting an industry. 

Even the EU, which tends to be more restrictive of contaminants and toxic chemicals, has acknowledged that its maximum levels in practice are set “to ensure a rejection rate of 5% or lower”, so that the “effect on trade” and the market is “limited”. 

Impact on Australian Communities

The state of South Australia has a rich and prosperous agricultural sector. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) in 2008, 51% of South Australia’s land was used for agricultural activity. However, this is partly attributable to extensive pesticide use. As a result, there have been reports in the past years of excessive spraying and herbicide drift, damage to crops from off-target herbicides and widespread exposure to the state’s population. 

The Australian food regulator has occasionally monitored pesticide residue in food and beverages diets through the Total Diet Survey. In 2011, the Total Diet Study detected allethrin – an insecticide – in mushroom and beef sausage.

The following year, a study by the University of New South Wales on 340 children in the state of South Australia found “widespread chronic exposure” to two major classes of insecticides: Organophosphorus (OP) and pyrethroid (PYR) compounds – the most widely used insecticides. 

Organophosphorus (OP) and pyrethroid are neurotoxins, meaning they cause either reversible or potentially permanent effects on the structure and function of nervous systems. Since both pesticide types are quickly broken down in the body, the study looked for their metabolites instead of the pesticides themselves.When compared to US and German Children, children in South Australia had significantly higher concentration of pesticide metabolites in their urine. South Australian children had 6 times as much concentration of an organophosphorus pesticide metabolite (DETP) in their urine compared to German children.

The conclusions of this study aligned with Australia’s 2011 Total Diet Study, finding that there were unusually high levels of chlorpyrifos in the 2-to-5-year-old age group. Although this was only 20% of the “acceptable daily intake” in Australia, the levels were over 85 times higher than the levels in Japanese children in Tokyo and 20 times as much as the US population.

In 2020, the EU chose not to renew the approval of chlorpyrifos as an insecticide – effectively banning the product because of toxicity and human health concerns. The EU then set the maximum residue levels at 0.01mg/kg – the lowest level that a laboratory can reliably measure. This means that any chlorpyrifos residues above this level are illegal in food products, which is as protective as technology currently allows. 

For its part, Australia has set the lowest detection limits for 17 out of 60 categories, such as blueberries, onions, eggs, and herbs. However, if chlorpyrifos is detected – even at much higher levels – in the remaining food categories, the toxic substance will nonetheless be allowed. 

Australia’s weak pesticide regulations allow chlorpyrifos to be used freely in crops, and when the pesticide ends up in food, its food safety laws do little to restrict the harmful pesticide residues.

A New Way Forward for Australia

The Australian government must reform its agriculture and food regulators to be more protective of the health of its citizens and the environment. The continued approval of highly toxic chemicals such as paraquat and atrazine – both banned in dozens of countries – reveals how outdated and permissive Australia’s agricultural laws have become. 

To make matters worse, Australian food regulation is based on an international standard designed to accept as many products as possible, without sufficiently filtering out the foods that have been contaminated due its poor pesticide regulation. The Australian government has similarly failed to comprehensively restrict heavy metals in food, such as lead. 

Real change will require political will and public pressure, as well as strong support to farmers to transition towards a greener future. By raising awareness and demanding accountability, Australians can push regulators and policymakers to prioritize safe, clean and healthy food systems, protecting not just consumers but the country’s ecosystems and future generations.

Featured image: Aleksander Dumała.