‘I was contaminated’: study reveals how hard it is to avoid pesticide exposure

The study found pesticides from crop spraying can end up far away from agricultural areas. Photograph: Dewald Kirsten/Shutterstock

For decades, Khoji Wesselius has noticed the oily scent of pesticides during spraying periods when the wind has blown through his tiny farming village in a rural corner of the Netherlands.

Now, after volunteering in an experiment to count how many such substances people are subjected to, Wesselius and his wife are one step closer to understanding the consequences of living among chemical-sprayed fields of seed potato, sugar beet, wheat, rye and onion.