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Robert Shepherd was poisoned by organophosphate (OP) pesticides. His health was damaged not by accident, but through regular exposure to sheep dip at work. Now aged 62, Robert became so ill he had to take ill-health retirement in 1991. With the help of his trade union, UNISON, in 1998 he won an out-of-court settlement of £80,000.

Robert Shepherd had worked as a farm manager for Lancashire County Council at the agricultural college since 1975. One of his jobs was to dip the college's flock of sheep. He first became ill in 1979 and by 1991 his symptoms, tiredness, irritability and loss of concentration, became so bad that he had to retire. It was only after he watched a TV programme on OP poisoning that Robert realised he had been poisoned by the sheep dip he used at work.

Unlike others involving farm workers, Robert's case was quite clearly due to sheep dip. He had only ever worked as a shepherd and had not used other chemicals. According to Dr Goran Jamal, a clinical neurophysiologist, "Mr Shepherd worked all his life as a shepherd, and handled nothing but these toxic chemicals. This pointed to organophosphates damaging his health. This case is building up a pattern of proof of such immense public health importance that the authorities should act on this evidence. There have been a string of cases which are beginning to put a very serious question mark over the alleged safety of these compounds."

In fact, questions have been asked about the health effects of OPs for almost a century. In 1900 nerve damage was reported in tuberculosis patients treated with OPs. Although the acute effects of OPs are widely accepted, some still doubt that these chemicals cause the kind of chronic damage that Robert suffered.

Robert says the college did not give him advice or protective equipment when he started work. Instead, he had to rely on manufacturers' labels, and says, "I don't feel they gave proper safety advice or warnings about what symptoms to look out for." According to pesticide expert Professor Andrew Watterson, "Any responsible employer, especially one involved in education on agriculture, which includes occupational health and safety, would have been familiar with good practice and the hazards of sheep dip ... In 1978, the Agricultural Training Board produced a trainees' guide on sheep dipping which would have been distributed to all agricultural colleges. It specifically refers to the need to wear rubber gloves, waterproof bib, face shield and rubber boots when dealing with dips."

Bronwyn McKenna, head of the legal department at UNISON agrees. She says, "As an agricultural college, they should have had access to the most up-to-date information about the dangers of sheep dips, not only to warn their staff but to protect their students. This case underlines the fact that the Council should have carried out detailed risk assessments and taken measures to provide personal protective clothing, as well as introducing an adequate system of monitoring the dipping process."

But for Robert, the damage is done. "My job was my life, and suddenly it all came to an end. I would like to see the damn stuff taken off the market. I don't want anyone else to suffer the way I have," he says.

In a 1996 study of 23 Welsh sheep farmers and a dipping contractor, all of whom used OPs, none used adequate personal protective equipment, complaining that it was too hot and made handling sheep very difficult. Only one farmer had done a COSHH assessment [H. Rees, Exposure to sheep dip and the incidence of acute symptoms in a group of Welsh sheep farmers, Occupational and Environmental Medicine 1996, 53(4), 258-263].

In 1996, a study of pesticide use by over 1,000 members of the European Federation of Agricultural Workers (EFA) found at least 20% thought they had been made ill by the pesticides they used, only 35% used personal protective equipment although it was available to 77% of workers, and the symptoms most commonly reported were headaches, skin irritation, stomach pains, vomiting, eye irritation and diarrhoea (Pesticides News, June 1997, 36, p. 7).

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