Since 1993, the U.S. Government has helped to coordinate a multilateral effort on environmental health under the Middle East Peace Process Multilateral Working Group on Environment. The program's goal is to catalyze an effort for the safe and effective use of pesticides among health, environmental, and agricultural experts, farmers and rural populations, agricultural distributors and government officials. It is recognized that exposure to agricultural chemicals, especially pesticides, are high and cause acute and chronic adverse health effects in farm workers, their children, and pregnant and nursing mothers. Exposures occur during mixing, application, aerial spray application, crop management, harvest, and post-harvest operations, and through contamination of drinking water and food. Exposures to the general population also occur from direct and indirect contamination of surface waters, food, and from the inappropriate disposal of unused pesticides and pesticides' containers. 

The United States (the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences and Department of Agriculture) has worked with a team of Egyptian, Israeli, Jordanian, and Palestinian experts to develop a program for collaborative environmental health and agricultural education, communication, surveys and interventions, and research. 

Over the past three years, several pilot projects and activities have been conducted in support of this program. 

Pilot projects and activities 

1. Safe Use. A regional communication network has been established among experts from the four areas, including computers, data management systems, and telefax machines. The cooperators have met on several occasions in the region to discuss and develop an overall program plan, and to hold a training session in risk assessment (provided by USEPA). In addition, short-term projects are now being implemented including health education for farmers and farm families, exposure monitoring and assessment, creation of shared databases on pesticide usage in the region, and training for health care professionals in diagnosis and treatment of pesticide poisoning. 

The next phase will include establishing a regional information system, which will include available information, research, reports, and data on pesticide registration, manufacture, distribution, and use, human and environmental exposures, available plant protection alternatives, and other relevant information. The next phase will also include incorporating safe use education/farmer outreach and evaluating the impact of such outreach by evaluating exposures in a target group of farmers over three years. Longer-term plans call for program expansion and for clinical and epidemiological, toxicological, and basic environmental health sciences collaborative research in the region. 

2. Effective Use. 

Regional experts, government officials, agricultural distributors, and farmers are working together to enhance and network existing or emerging local efforts in integrated pest management, or IPM, as it is known. The focus for the regional cooperation is in greenhouse vegetables. The cooperators have made site visits to greenhouse farms in Deir Alla, Jordan, Beth Shean, Israel, Jericho, PA and most recently Ismailiya, Egypt. The regional IPM experts presented a poster session on the project at the 1996 U.S. National Integrated Pest Management Meeting, planned and held a training session for IPM scouts in Jordan in 1996, and provided local familiarization and training in scouting and pesticide resistance management and monitoring in Beth Shean. 

The project has supported the creation of a pesticide management resistance effort in Jordan in cooperation with the one in Beth Shean. In addition, an IPM demonstration greenhouse was been established in Jericho in 1997. 

The next phase to begin the fall of 1998 will include establishing a greenhouse scouting program in Jenin, Tulkarem, and Qalqilyia in the West Bank, in Ismailiya, Egypt, and in the Eshkol region of Israel in cooperation with the Beth Shean and Jordan Valley IPM programs. The local scouting programs have agreed to provide a core list of data to a central point for sharing by the regional cooperators. In addition, the cooperation between the Beth Shean and Dirala pesticide resistance monitoring stations will incorporate a third cooperator focusing on Ismailiya. 

Outreach and education in IPM will continue in all the targeted areas: Jordan Valley (Jordan), Beth Shean Valley (Israel), Jenin-Qalqilya-Tulkarem (West Bank), and Ismailiya (Egypt). Regional Cooperating Institutions Egypt: Safe Use: Ain Shams University Alexandria University Effective Use: Ministry of Agriculture Ismailiya Farmers Union Israel: Safe Use: Ministry of Environment Ministry of Labor Tel Aviv University Effective Use: Ministry of Agriculture Beth Shean Regional Council (Growers Association) Eshkol Regional Council (Growers Association) Jordan: Safe Use: Royal Scientific Society Applied Sciences University Effective Use: Ministry of Agriculture National Center for Agricultural Research and Technology Transfer Private Sector and IPM Growers association Areas Under the Palestinian Authority: Safe Use: Birzeit University Ministry of Health Effective Use: Birzeit University Ministry of Agriculture (NARC) Farmers Union 
  

Project Photo Album