Britain’s ‘Erin Brockovich’ wins landmark battle against pesticides being spread on fields near homes

DAILY MAIL
Friday, November 14, 2008

Environmental campaigner Georgina Downs, dubbed Britain’s Erin Brockovich, today won a landmark legal victory in her long-running battle over pesticides.
Her triumph is the culmination of a seven-year fight with the Government to impose stricter controls over pesticides used in crop spraying.

The High Court judge’s ruling means that Hilary Benn, Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) Secretary, must rethink the way spraying is controlled and reassess the risks to human health.

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The campaign by 35-year-old Miss Downs bears a striking resemblance to the one fought by Erin Brockovich in the U.S. She was an unemployed single mother who became a legal assistant and almost single-handedly brought down a power company accused of polluting a city’s water supply
Mr Justice Collins declared that the Government had failed to comply with a European directive which sets out to protect people from possible harmful exposure to pesticides. Defra is now considering an appeal
Miss Downs, 35, said as she left court: ‘I am obviously very pleased with today’s result and have been fully vindicated, as this case was based on a set of core arguments that I identified and have been presenting to the Government over the last seven years.

‘This is obviously a very significant and landmark ruling for the potentially millions of residents throughout the country who, like myself, live in the locality of pesticide-sprayed fields.’

Miss Downs, who lives on the edge of farm fields near Chichester, West Sussex, launched her independent UK Pesticides Campaign in 2001. She was named the Daily Mail’s Eco Woman of the Year in May.

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