THE campaign for a full investigation into the facts surrounding the health risks of organophosphate-based sheep dips seems to be gathering pace. Hannah Chapman reports

GROWING up I had a vague understanding of the dangers of sheep dips.

My mother’s parents ran a sheep farm in Thornton-le-Beans, near Northallerton, and from being very young, I remember hearing mutterings about the organophosphate-based dips being bad for your health.

My grand-dad, who carried out all the dipping on the farm, died almost 15 years ago after developing Parkinson’s disease.

It was common knowledge that many farmers suffered flu-like symptoms after dipping, my mother tells me, and the family always believed it was the sheep dips which contributed to my grand-dad’s ill health.

But his doctors repeatedly said there was no connection. No proof they said.

And what can you do if the medical evidence just isn’t there? Where do you turn?

Well now, a decade and a half on, it’s clear that my grand-dad’s story is being repeated up and down the country with farmers left chronically-ill and in some cases wheelchair bound after years of dipping their sheep in OP chemicals.

Their suffering is being made worse by a refusal from those in authority to acknowledge that OP dips were poisoning them.

This month’s release of a 1992 survey of 700 farmers and contractors working with sheep dips is long overdue, but in my mind, it raises even more questions about who knew what, and when about the health impacts of organophosphates.

The Health and Safety Executive document, published after a Freedom of Information Act request by campaigners, lists a range of symptoms experienced by those using OP dips, including headaches, nausea and aching limbs, to longer term problems with joints, loss of memory and difficulty concentrating.

It shows that there was a huge underreporting of ill health associated with sheep dipping, and the report goes into great detail about how farmers needed to be more careful, and wear better protective equipment.

But to me, the key piece of information in the document seems to be the figure relating to contractors. Just 17 contract dippers were surveyed - 2.4 per cent of the total - but they accounted for 10.6 per cent of reports of ill health.

As pointed out by the Sheep Dip Sufferers support group in their statement following the document’s release, this suggests that the greatest single factor is cumulative exposure to OP dip – especially given that contractors were more likely to be wearing better protective clothing.

So the more you use it, the more likely you are to get sick.

This survey was carried out in 1992 – the same year the Ministry brought to an end its compulsory dipping programme.

A coincidence? Campaigners think not, and are calling for the release of all correspondence between the Health and Safety Executive and MAFF in the run up to that decision being taken.

If there’s nothing to hide, why not disclose all the information and let the facts speak for themselves?

Or could it be that any public admission that the Government at the time knew these chemicals were incredibly harmful could trigger a mass compensation action?

Well, so much time has passed now that there is no realistic prospect of legal claims being successful.

Defra minister George Eustice is adamant that “exhaustive” scientific research has concluded that low-level exposure to OP does not cause long-term ill health in adults, but says he is “sympathetic” to farmers who “associate their illness with the use of OP sheep dip”.

He has pledged to look back through government archives from the time when compulsory dipping was stopped - but he needs to go further.

Surely there should be an independent inquiry to get to the bottom of just what those in Government knew, and if they did have information on just how dangerous these chemicals are, why didn’t they act much more quickly to protect people?

At the very least, there needs to be some sort of formal recognition that health conditions can develop as a direct result of using OP dips so that sufferers can get proper help via the NHS.

It is far too late for farmers like my grand-dad who had to suffer in silence, but there is still time to act for those still living with the debilitating consequences of these chemicals.

They shouldn’t have to be fighting for every scrap of information. They deserve answers.