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Update on Pesticides, Health and Alternatives See PANUPS updates
service, for complete information. November 16, 2006 WHO
official calls for ban on organophosphate pesticides to prevent
suicides: The World Health Organization coordinator of mental
and brain disorders, Jose Bertolote, presented studies that
implicate pesticides, especially organophosphates—a class of
highly acutely toxic chemicals, as a leading cause of
preventable suicides. "We have very good studies interviewing
people between the act of ingesting pesticides and their deaths.
More than 95% are desperate when they learn they are going to
die," according to Bertolote. People who attempt suicide with
pesticides “tend to be rural folk who would have died by the
time their families get them to hospital,” reported Reuters. "If
in despair you drink pesticide(s), you die in three hours and …
the vast majority of these people did not have the intention to
die and they did not know it wou