The adoption of Bt cotton can substantially reduce the risk and the incidence of [pesticide] poisonings, Ferdaus Hossain and colleagues of the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics, of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA, write, in the latest issue of the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health
Using data gathered from a 1992-1996 survey of farmers in northern China, researchers showed that Bt cotton adoption reduced pesticide use. There were an average of 54,000 cases of pesticide poisonings of farmers per year, with 490 of them fatal, before Bt cotton had been introduced. Surveys showed that farmers who grew only Bt cotton applied about 18 kg of formulated pesticide per hectare, while farmers who grew only conventional cotton sprayed about 46 kg per ha. While almost 33% of the farmers who exclusively used non-Bt cotton reported pesticide poisoning, only 9% of those who exclusively used Bt cotton reported such cases.
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http://www.ijoeh.com/pfds/1003_Hossain.pdf
