This story was originally published by The Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Almost half of the world’s farmers are poisoned by pesticides every single year, a study has found.

Using publicly available data from 2006-2023, the study, which was commissioned by Pesticide Action Network, found there to be an estimated 402 million to 433 million cases of unintentional acute pesticide poisoning of farmers and farm workers every year.

Based on a worldwide farming population of 934 million, this means approximately 46 percent of farmers are being poisoned every year. The greatest estimated number of poisonings was in southern Asia, followed by Southeast Asia and East Africa.

The overall highest national incidence of poisoning was in Burkina Faso in West Africa, where nearly 84 percent of farmers and farm workers were reported to have experienced poisoning.

The study, published in the journal Frontiers in Public........

© Mother Jones