Claim no easy victories: evaluating the pesticide industry's global safe use campaign

The pesticide industry's Global Safe Use campaign has reportedly produced a dramatic decline in pesticide-related health and environmental problems in Guatemala. This paper challenges this claim, reanalyzing existing data and further evaluating claims of the campaign's efficacy. The paper argues that the campaign's strategy inadequately links knowledge with structural constraints on behavior. It also suffers from the industry's contradictory definitions of the pesticide problem both as public perception and as a serious health and environmental threat. The paper suggests an approach common to the field of Industrial Hygiene be applied to reducing pesticide hazards. The paper concludes by locating the Safe Use campaign within larger struggles to re-regulate globalizing economic spaces.