The Limitless Existence [Archives:2000/50/Health]

Dr. Abdul Rahman Thabet
Pesticide Toxicology and Environmental Pollution
Faculty of Agriculture
Sanaa University
The wide spread of qat cultivation deserves intensive studies relating to its social, economic and health hazards. Insecticides used in the cultivation imposes a real threat on a mans health.
To avoid the effect of the traditional insecticides, more attention has been given to find other alternatives by using biological elements with some chemical insecticides that have been proven harmless.
The great demands on qat and its high revenues have made it preferable to the other kinds of corps. Its quick revenues encourage farmers to use chemical substances and insecticides to get good and more production, specially in winter when the tree is likely to be slowly growing .

Physical Effects
– Arterial blood pressure
– High arterial blood pressure and high heart beating with possible heart and blood vessels diseases.
– Difficulty in controlling blood pressure.
– May cause heart attacks in patients of arterial blood pressure.
– May help cause cerebral and heart clots.
For the above reasons patients of arterial blood pressure are advised to refrain from qat.

Digestive System
– Qat chewers often suffer from stomatitis and eosophagitis because of the Tannic in qat.
– It helps slow down emptying stomachache from food.
– Slows process of emptying the stomach may cause heartburn and other diseases.

Loss of appetite
– Chewers lose appetite after chewing. They rarely have a complete meal on the same day.

constipation
– The tannic acid in the qat leaves causes constipation to those who chew qat regularly.
– Regular chewers try to avoid this by having a meal with a lot of fat to help have a loose bowel movement.
– It slows down discretion which is caused by the consumptional effects of qat leaves.

Hepatitis
– Continuos chewing may affect the liver. This may be a result of the remains of insecticides in the leaves.

Effects on Urinary and Reproductive Systems
Chewing qat may lead to:
– urination difficulties.
– oversexuality.
– sperms appear in urine
– weak erection
Psychological Effects
Qat has a stimulating effects on the Nerves System.
After 1.5-3 hours of chewing , chewers feel:
– highly spirited,
– a bit excited caused mainly by social interaction and excessive talks, and
– energetic.
These effects reach the climax during the first three hours of chewing then they gradually fade away (3.5-10 hours) and are replaced with:
– Parathymia (mood disorder)
– Anxiety
– Depression
– Insomnia
– Loss of appetite
– Irritation

Imported Chemical Insecticides.
Chemical insecticides are more often used in the northern governorates than the other places. The land cultivated with qat in the northern governorates is vaster than that in the southern ones. During 1993-1998 use of insecticides rose from 585 to 2305 tons. There is no statistics on the volume of insecticides used in cultivation of qat but the official sources indicated that it is 70%.

Imported Chemical Fertilizers
Fertilizers used to improve fertility of the cultivated land to increase production has not only polluted the arable land but the ground water as well. Most of the farmers are illiterate, thus can not read the proper usage of the fertilizers causing many health and environmental problems.

Other Factors influencing Fighting Qat Pets
– Farmers depend on traders of insecticides and their neighbors as information sources on how to use insecticides.
– Although using the same insecticide and fertilizers farmers use them in different volumes and at different times which indicates their ignorance of the right use.
– Some farmers in the countryside use more than 3 kinds of insecticides at the same time.
– Some farmers use substances that these are internationally banned such as DDT. In addition, they use kinds that have been classified by the WHO under 1-A and 1-B such that are only allowed to be used be specialists.
– Banned insecticides enter Yemen through smuggling.
– Ignoring the safety period after each treatment (2-3 days.)
– Many farmers do not know how and when to use insecticides.
– Some farmers are ignorant of the consequences of random use of insecticides.

Effects of Insecticides and Fertilizers on the Environment
– Effects of many kinds of chlorine hydrocarbon insecticides remain in the soil for more than 30 years.
– Such insecticides affect mans health and the environment due to their ability to dissolve in fat. They accumulate in mans body causing poisoning and fetus malformation.
– The chlorine hydrocarbonic insecticides banned in the beginning of the 1970s in the developed countries are still used here.
– The random use of insecticides, specially in qat cultivation endangers mans health and the environment.
– Local, as well as international reports have established that a number of diseases are caused by the effects of insecticides in the leaves of qat. This effect sometimes reach the fetus.
– The random use of insecticides create a kind of amenity in pets.
– Development of this amenity requires high concentration of insecticides which causes many troubles to mans health and environment.

Effects on Chewers
– Insecticides remains in the leaves mixes up with some inseams causing a state of stimulation to the Central Nerves System. The remains are sometimes transferred to the fetus and newly born babies by the umbilical cord or through breast-feeding.
– Many reports have indicated that the remains accumulating inside the tissues spread causing immunity deficiency and many cancer diseases.

Total expenditure on qat
About 3 million people 27% of the total population chew qat. If the individual spends 300-400 rials on qat daily, 900 million rials is spent per day on qat by 3 million people. In other words about 1 billion rials is spent on qat per day, 30 billion per month and 460 billion per year.

Qat-cultivated land
19708000 Hectares
1999100,000 Hectares
In 1998 the land cultivated with Qat was as follows:
Sanaa37715 Hectares
Ibb15854 Hectares
Hajjah 14594 Hectares
Dhamar8263 Hectares
The first four governorates form 76.2% of the total size of land cultivated with qat.

Qat income per Hectare
QatUSD 8410156%
GrapesUSD 8170245%
OrangesUSD 550842%
CoffeeUSD 550833%
BananasUSD 333723%
Water consumption for qat in the governorates per Hectare
Mareb30.4 thousand m3
Sanaa 20.6 thousand m3
Taiz11.5 thousand m3
Ibb5.2 thousand m3

70% of the total imported insecticides (3205 tones in a year) plus 17 thousand tons of smuggled insecticides is used in qat cultivation.

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