§ Ms HarmanTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what assessment he has made of the level of risk to human health from the use of lindane as a pesticide. [6216]
§ Mr. HoramThe Government are advised on the safety of pesticides by the independent expert statutory Advisory Committee on Pesticides. It has reviewed the use of lindane as a non-agricultural pesticide and concluded that used in accordance with the conditions of approval there would be no undue risk to human health. Details of this review were published in December 1992 in the document "Evaluation of Gamma HCH (Lindane 2)", copies of1134W which are available in the Library. A review of the agricultural uses of lindane is presently being undertaken by the committee and the results of this are expected early next year.
§ Ms HarmanTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what evidence he has evaluated in respect of a possible link between lindane and breast cancer. [6220]
§ Mr. HoramThe Department of Health's independent expert Advisory Committee on the Carcinogenicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment reviewed the available epidemiology data on breast cancer in women and levels of lindane in serum and breast fat tissue at its meeting on the 16 March 1995. The committee concluded that there was no clear evidence of an association between serum and fat levels of lindane and breast cancer at the present time, but recommended that the matter be kept under review.
§ Ms HarmanTo ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will list the countries which have banned the use of lindane as a pesticide and their reasons for doing so. [6221]
§ Mrs. BrowningI have been asked to reply.
This information is not collected by the Government. I am aware that approvals have been withdrawn for uses of lindane in Denmark, Sweden and Finland.
§ Ms HarmanTo ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) what is the statutory maximum safe level for lindane in milk for human consumption in each European country; [6218]
(2) what is the maximum recommended safe level for consumption of lindane by humans in each European country. [6219]
§ Mrs. BrowningI have been asked to reply.
Statutory pesticide maximum residue levels—MRLs—for all active ingredient/commodity combinations in the EU are being established through an EC Commission priority programme. The MRL for lindane in milk was included in directive 93/57/EC and is set at 0.008 mg/kg of milk.
Safety limits are expressed in terms of the acceptable daily intake—ADI—of a particular pesticide from all sources, which is the level that can he consumed every day for an individual's entire lifetime in the practical certainty, on the basis of all known facts, that no harm will result. ADIs are agreed internationally through a World Health Organisation procedure, and for lindane the recommended level is 0.008 mg/kg/bodyweight.
§ Ms HarmanTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what is the maximum safe level of lindane in milk for human consumption; and how many times in each of the last five years milk has been found to contain higher amounts than the maximum safe level. [6217]
§ Mrs. BrowningI have been asked to reply.
For lindane in milk, the current maximum residue level is 0.008 mg/kg, and at no time during the last five years has monitoring by the Government's working party on pesticide residues revealed an exceedance of this limit.