Dozens of households in Phu Dien village of Bac Tu Liem, a district in the suburbs of Hanoi, have got richer with floriculture. However, the profitable career has degraded the environment.
Nguyen Thi Hue in Phu Dien Village said her house is near a flower field.
“We have to wear protective masks all day long, from the morning till night,” she said.
Hue and other locals have to wear protective masks to “avoid” the smell from the pesticide that farmers spray on the flowers at the nearby flower field. However, the masks, in fact, cannot help much, and the locals still have to “live together with the terrible smell” every day.
“They (the farmers) spray pesticide on the flowers once every two days,” Hue complained.
“Things are worse on Tet days or holidays, when the demand for flowers is high,” she said. “Farmers think they should use as much pesticide as possible to keep the flowers fresh”.
A neighbor of Hue noted that the volume of pesticide used by farmers nowadays is much higher than that in 2009-2010.
“As the flowering growing area is large, the pesticide spraying is carried out mechanically, not manually, as they did in the past,” he explained. “The spraying causes air pollution.”
The man complained that the local authorities had turned a deaf ear to the locals’ complaints.
Dang Van Ly, head of the Phu Dien village, confirmed that local residents have repeatedly complained about the overuse of pesticide, which causes serious environment pollution.
The local authorities inspected the flower fields and found that the pesticide products the farmers used are permitted by state management agencies, according to Ly.
The pesticide products mostly used in Phu Dien include Paraquat (herbicide), Neretox (pesticides), and Conphai (fluid leads) which all can be found in the list of the plant protection products allowed to be used in Vietnam.
However, scientists warn that the abuse of pesticide will harm the environment and farmers.
A high ranking official of the Phu Dien Ward said local authorities can persuade farmers not to spray too much pesticide and punish those who use prohibited products or those who leave pesticide bottles on the ground after spraying.
He denied that the pesticide harms residents’ lives and the living environment.
“The use of pesticide certainly will affect the environment, but the influences are not as big as complained,” he said.
He also said that “living together with pesticide” is unavoidable in the village in the suburbs of the city, where production land is located next to building land.
