Environmental contaminants and mental health

Abstract

This chapter discusses the problem of the effects of environmental contaminants and agrochemicals on mental health, relating this discussion to the issue of the right to health and the critique of the paradigm of chemicalization of life. Many studies have demonstrated a necessary criticism of the vicious circle linking infringement of rights, food insecurity, and institutionalized intoxication, with deep and severe social, health, and environmental consequences. Several kinds of physical and mental illnesses have been investigated as widely related to chemical-dependent agriculture, the industrial food model, and the predatory and exclusionary development model that produces intensive exploitation of labour and nature and multiple environmental contaminations. The consequences of the paradigm of chemicalization of life include intoxication of the population, environmental injustice, and human rights violations, and strengthen the renewal of interests of the ‘disease industry’ and the medicalization processes.