Toxic twist: Locals at high risk of pesticide poisoning

HYDERABAD: In a shocking revelation, scientists have found that the exposure of Telugu people to pesticide poisoning is up to 30 times more than that of people in the West and this explains the high incidence of diabetes among Hyderabadis and those living in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.
An international team of researchers, including those from Hyderabad, has not only found a direct link between pesticide exposure and diabetes, but also noticed that people in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh contain high levels of pesticide in their blood.Neighbouring Tamilians have only 9% higher pesticide content than Westerners. The high concentration of several dangerous pesticides belonging to the organo-chlorine group have been found in the blood stream of Telugus .

The study comes close on the heels of a research by citybased National Institute of Nutrition (NIN) that warned of high pesticide content in the bodies of school children.
The present study concentrated on South Asian immigrants of Telugu and Tamil origin for evaluation of organochlorine pesticides and the associated increased risk of diabetes. Nevertheless, the results hold true for the resident Telugu population. The research team was drawn from University of California, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Imperial College, London, Ealing Hospital, United Kingdom, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, and the National Heart and Lung Institute, UK.
The study revealed that the “rates of diabetes mellitus are higher in South Asians than in other populations and persist after migration”.
One unexplored cause may be higher exposure to persistent organic pollutants associated with diabetes in other populations, the researchers said. The results were published in latest issue of the Journal of Endocrine Society.
“Tamils had approximately three to nine-fold higher levels of organochlorine pesticides, and Telugus had ninefold to 30-fold higher levels as compared with European whites. The odds of exposure… were significantly greater in South Asian diabetes cases than in controls. South Asian immigrants have a higher body burden of organochlorine pesticides,” the researchers said, adding that diabetes is associated with higher concentration of pesticides.
India has a diabetes prevalence of 10% and the figure is slightly higher in Hyderabad, which is often described as the diabetes capital of India. Indiscriminate use of pesticides in horticulture and agriculture in the twin Telugu states has compounded the problem further, with researchers linking the higher incidence of diabetes to higher levels of organochlorine pesticides in their blood stream.