These molecules were discovered during toxicological analyzes carried out on 70 children from the agricultural plain of Aunis, where the number of pediatric cancers is increasing. According to information from franceinfo and the newspaper “Le Monde”, new cases of cancer among young people have been recorded.
It was in February that Mathilde was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Lymph node cancer at 17. Since then, the young girl, who was unable to pass her baccalaureate, has undergone 65 chemotherapy sessions, and an operation which requires her to move around in a wheelchair, with a strict ban on standing. “Cancer, tumor… These are words we never imagine we could hear about our childtestifies to franceinfo Sonia, her mother. We tell ourselves that it only happens to other people. Not to us. But now that my daughter has been affected, I discovered that in the villages around us, there were many cases of childhood cancer. But we don’t know where it comes from.”
Determining the origin of childhood cancers has for years been the struggle of the inhabitants of the Aunis plain, a vast agricultural and cereal-producing area in the agglomeration of La Rochelle, where an excess risk of pediatric cancers may have occurred. be observed thanks to a study carried out by the General Cancer Registry of Poitou-Charentes, an Inserm laboratory of the Poitiers University Hospital, as revealed in 2021 by the journal The World.
“We started carrying out this study in 2018, when Pauline, a teenager who died of the disease at the age of 15, was diagnosed with cancer”explains Jean-Marie Piot, president of the League against cancer in Charente-Maritime, which fully finances Inserm’s work. “This study is carried out in two neighboring municipalities: Saint-Rogatien and Pérignycontinues Jean-Marie Piot. It is updated annually, and every year we arrive at the same conclusion, that is to say that the number of cases of childhood cancer for the municipality of Saint-Rogatien alone is more than four times higher than the expected average. It’s huge!” This town has only 2,000 inhabitants.
According to our information, the number of cases increased from six when the study was first published, which covered the period 2008-2015, to ten cases for the period 2008-2020. “We know that there are other sick children, but they do not yet appear in our statistics, because we must have at least two years of hindsight to be able to take them into account”specifies the president of the League against cancer in Charente-Maritime.
The World and franceinfo were able to identify at least five other cases of pediatric cancer, including two in Périgny: a 4-year-old boy, who died in June, and a 13-year-old teenager, who also died in March 2022. But the others municipalities are not spared. In Bourgneuf, where Sonia’s family lives, another young girl, aged 19, also developed Hodgkin’s lymphoma. “The same cancer!exclaims Sonia, Mathilde’s mother, diagnosed at the same time, in February.”
A situation that worries residents, and in the face of which elected officials, like the mayor of Bourgneuf, Paul-Roland Vincent, feel powerless: “When I receive families whose children are sick, frankly it’s hard. I have the feeling of not being able to meet their expectations. I have three cases of Hodgkin’s lymphoma in my town, two young girls and a man only 40 years ! Several times I have been told : ‘Mr. Mayor, what are you going to do ?’ But what do you want me to answer? The powers of a local elected official are limited. It is up to the State to take up this subject.”
To mobilize public authorities, parents came together in an association. In their sights: pesticides used in the fields surrounding their communities. “We know that cancers can have an environmental cause”explains Franck Rinchet Girollet, president of the Avenir Santé Environnement association, whose little boy was himself affected by cancer. “We have had several episodes of water pollution with pesticides, many collection points have been closed. And we find a lot of pesticides in the air in our communities. Some molecules have even been found in record concentrations. All of this ended up heightening our concern.”
After having organized several demonstrations, and published, without result, a forum to request concrete actions from the authorities, the parents of the association decided a few months ago to raise funds to carry out tests on the hair and urine of 70 children. Aged 3 to 17, the children whose hair and urine were collected live in six municipalities in the metropolitan area, including Saint-Rogatien, Périgny and Bourgneuf. “It is not a scientific study strictly speaking, but a citizen research project”specifies Franck Rinchet-Girollet, professional bus driver, who recently agreed to become parliamentary attaché to the constituency’s environmentalist deputy, Benoit Biteau. “We know that there are too many cancers among our children, but the public authorities do nothing, so we do it in their place, with the means we have, hoping that it will eventually make them move.”
The World and franceinfo had access to the results of these tests, carried out by the public laboratory of a university hospital approved for this type of analysis. We discovered that 14 different molecules were found in the children’s urine, 45 in their hair. Among them, substances banned for a long time but known for their persistence in the environment, such as PCP, a proven carcinogen. “Other molecules may be suitable for domestic use, such as DEET, which is found in particular in mosquito repellents”explains Laurence Huc, research director at the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (Inrae) who analyzed the results for the association.
Other substances correspond to agricultural use. “We find in particular phthalimide, which is a derivative of folpel, a fungicide used on major cereal crops, and suspected of being carcinogenic for humans by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA). More than 15% of children have it in their urine There is also pendimethalin, a broad-spectrum herbicide, found in 20% of the hair samples tested. This molecule is classified as a possible carcinogen by the EPA, the health protection agency. “environment and health in the United States”. These two substances, folpel and pendimethalin, are among the main molecules detected during the latest measurements by the air quality observatory in Nouvelle-Aquitaine (Atmo).
More surprising, the presence in children’s hair and urine of banned pesticides, from the neonicotinoid family, in particular acetamiprid and one of its degradation products. The parent molecule and its metabolite were found in the hair of 17% of children. According to Jean-Marc Bonmatin, chemist and toxicologist at the CNRS in Orléans, specialist in neonicotinoids, “this molecule has been banned since 2018, it is inexplicable to find it in urine.”
“If there is this molecule, it means that the children were exposed in the preceding days, and I am not aware of any veterinary product based on acetamiprid. For me, that probably means that it “There has been illegal use of this pesticide, which is a powerful neurotoxicant.”
Marc Bonmatin, chemist and toxicologist at the CNRS in Orléansat franceinfo
All the test results will be presented to families on Saturday evening during a public meeting. It remains to be seen what value the authorities will attach to these tests. “citizens”. According to an expert from the National Health Security Agency (ANSES), interviewed by franceinfo, “the health interpretation of this type of information is difficult, because there is, unfortunately, no threshold for pesticide residues in urine or hair. However, these data are interesting, and we have to look for them, because they make it possible to draw up an inventory of the exposure of populations to all these molecules”.