Pesticides industry body CCFI objects to ICMR study
Crop Care Federation of India (CCFI), an industry body of pesticides manufacturers, has sought retraction of aresearch report published by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), in September that talked about exposure to pesticides causing depression, mild cognitive impairment among agricultural workers based on a study in a West Bengal district.
In a letter to ICMR Director General Rajiv Bahl earlier this week, CCFI’s executive director Nirmala Pathrawal said that duty of care and diligence are important for all the scientists in public funded research organisations and has urged him to retract the particular study published in the Indian Journal of Medical Research.
The population-based study titled “Pesticide exposure associated with mild cognitive impairment and depression among agricultural workers: Case control study in rural India”, has identified a prevalence of 18.9 per cent of cognitive impairment with or without depression, 8.3 per cent depression with or without cognitive impairment and 1.5 per cent possible movement disorder.
The researchers in the study have also identified that pesticide exposure is a risk for development of these neuropsychiatric disorders of neuro-inflammatory origin.
“Among biomarkers, PON1 was identified to be significantly higher among participants who spent more hours in agricultural work and applied pesticides more frequently,” according to the study, conducted among 808 participants in Galsi II block of Purba Bardhaman district.
The authors of the study said it was carried out to identify association of chronic pesticide exposure with cognitive impairment, depression, and movement disorder by utilising a comprehensive paradigm of symptom-based validated screening, and estimation of RBC acetylcholinesterase (AChE), plasma butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) and paraoxonase 1 (PON1) levels among high risk rural population, particularly agricultural workers.
But, CCFI’s Pathrawal in her letter has highlighted that India is the third largest exporter of agrochemicals, sold in over 150 countries. India also ranks the second largest in global agricultural production with $640 billion, but it ranks 171 in pesticides consumption — 0.24 kg/ha.
“This demonstrates that Indian farmers are efficient and judicious users of agrochemicals. Unfortunately, some including ICMR, choose to suppress this fact to drive a different agenda,” she alleged.
Citing case of paracetamol, in which some reports claim it causes cognitive impairments while some other reports say it reduces cognitive impairments, CCFI has said that results of case-control studies can vary widely.
“Case-control studies cannot establish cause-and-effect because they are observational, retrospective, and they often cannot control for confounding variables. The fundamental objective of a case-control study is to compare individuals with a condition/outcome (cases) to those without condition/outcome (controls) to identify the differences between these two groups.
“If the control and case groups are the same in a case-control study, it is invalid because both the groups would have identical characteristics, making it impossible to identify any differences related to the disease or exposure,” CCFI said.
It has also told ICMR that the Centre’s “Anaemia Mukt Bharat survey” has showed Purba Bardhaman district is home for severely anaemic population. “It is well known that people with iron deficiency are anaemic and they show cognitive disabilities including impaired attention, memory, and developmental issues,” Pathrawal said.
Published on December 3, 2025
