Syngenta, which marketed the fungicide, attacked the federal health authorities for their communication on the dangerousness of molecules.
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For agrochemistry, the issues related to the search for pesticide degradation products in water are considerable. To the point that in Switzerland, the federal health authorities were continued by the Syngenta group before the country’s administrative justice for their communication on the “relevance” of certain metabolites of chlorothalonil – a fungicide marketed since the 1970s and prohibited since 2019. For several years, the case has been shaking the Swiss Confederation. “In 2013, we have detected by chance the presence in a water table of a metabolite of chlorothalonil, the R417888, says Pierre-Antoine Hildbrand, vice-mayor of Lausanne charged with questions related to water. Firms not sharing The standards necessary for the development of the methods of analyzing the metabolites of their pesticides, it took us several years to discover another metabolite of chlorothalonil, the R471811, in greater concentrations. “
The data published in 2019 then makes great noise: the metabolite called R471811 exceeds the concentration of 0.1 µg/L in 60 % of the catchments of the Swiss plateau, which concentrates two thirds of the country’s population. Its congener, the R417888, is found at high levels of the same threshold in 20 % of the stations in the same area. “In 2016, when the problem was identified on a large scale, we without delay began to work with farmers in the region to ask them to no longer use this molecule, says Hildbrand. We thought that contaminations by his metabolites were going to fall quickly. We were shocked to note that this was not the case: no real drop was observed. “
In 2020, the Swiss Federal Administrative Court agreed with Syngenta, forcing health authorities to no longer communicate on the dangerousness of some of the chlorothalonil metabolites. Exchanges with the Federal Office for Food Safety and Veterinary Affairs (OSAV) Swiss become unreal. The question of how many Swiss are exposed, to the tap, to water too loaded with chlorothalonil metabolites, the OSV responds that around 8 % of the population is concerned, or around 700,000 people. But on the subjects linked to the “relevance” of these metabolites, the office can no longer respond. Question: “Is OSV free to communicate to the public the information it considers useful on chlorothalonil metabolites?” Answer: “No.”