Study Puts Global Pesticide Poisonings at More Than 400 Million a Year

Researchers at Pesticide Action Network organizations estimate that 402 million to 433 million cases of unintentional acute pesticide poisoning (sudden poisonings that were not deliberate) occur worldwide each year, up from the roughly 385 million a year reported by a 2020 systematic review. Their update was published Sept. 2, 2026, in the journal Frontiers in Public Health.

The four authors are Wolfgang Boedeker and Peter Clausing of PAN Germany, Meriel Watts of PAN Asia Pacific and Emily Marquez of PAN North America. They extended the earlier review to cover the literature from 2006 to 2023 and added mortality figures from the World Health Organization. The study covers data for 139 countries: 62 drawn from 214 published articles and another 77 from the WHO Mortality Database. Those sources together recorded about 369,632 poisonings a year, made up of 9,182 deaths and 360,450 nonfatal cases. The team scaled those national counts up to world regions to reach their global range, which includes around 11,000 deaths a year.

Measured against a world farming population of approximately 934 million, this figure indicates that "an estimated 46% of farmers are being poisoned by pesticides every year." The greatest number of nonfatal cases is in Southern Asia, followed by Southeastern Asia and East Africa.

The estimate is an interested party's. All four authors are listed on the study as staff of Pesticide Action Network organizations, which campaign against hazardous pesticides. Their conclusion calls for implementation of a recommendation by the Council of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization to phase out highly hazardous pesticides, which could significantly reduce the burden. That is the authors' policy position and the FAO Council's, not a result of the review.

The paper also cites an older benchmark: a WHO task force estimated in 1990 that about one million unintentional pesticide poisonings occurred each year, causing approximately 20,000 deaths.