More than one in ten people who are regularly exposed to organophosphate pesticides（有机磷

More than one in ten people who are regularly exposed to organophosphate pesticides(有机磷酸脂农药) will suffer unrecoverable physical and mental damage, a team of psychiatrists warns. The investigators say that theirs is the first serious attempt to estimate the number of people suffering because of chronic low-level exposure to the pesticides.

"This is a worrying high level of illness," says one researcher. The findings by the researcher, who also treats many of the victims, conflict with those of the Britain's government agency monitoring occupational health, which says there is no good evidence to suggest chronic exposure leads to widespread illness. The research team sent questionnaires to 400 farmers selected at random from a phone book. Of 179 who replied, 130 reported that they had been exposed to organophosphates. And 21 farmers complained of enough symptoms to be classed as suffering from organophosphate poisoning. Allowing for bias inherent in the survey method, they suggest that around 10 percent of farmers exposed to the pesticides suffer from poisoning.

The researchers also uncovered a consistent pattern of symptoms ranging from extreme tiredness and speech difficulty to suicidal impulses. Again this contrasts with the government agency's view that there is no clear pattern of symptoms for pesticide poisoning, making a diagnosis difficult.

They believe the real figure for poisoning is much higher, once you include cancers and heart disease linked to the pesticide. Last year, British specialists also found evidence of a link between organophosphates and severe bone abnormalities in eight men. One of the researchers, Anthony Lyons of Queen's Medical centre in Nottingham, says preliminary results from a larger follow-up study suggest the extent of bone damage may be worse than they feared.

All those who suffer from organophosphate poisoning complain of becoming "exquisitely sensitive" to any further exposure. This is bad news for any Gulf War veterans sent back to the Middle East. Many scientists and doctors are convinced that Gulf War Syndrome is at least partly caused by organophosphate pesticides, which were sprayed in tents and on clothes to protect troops from biting insects.

A spokesman for Britain's Ministry of Defense says there are no immediate plans to send ground troops to the Gulf. But the US is moving 5,000 troops into the region. Returning troops "would be more vulnerable to poisoning", says one of the leading US authorities on such poisoning.

In which area do the findings of the researchers have confliction with those Britain's Health and Safety Executive(HSE), the government agency monitoring occupational health？ ______.

A．Whether exposure to organophosphate will do any harm to man

B．Whether chronic exposure to organophosphate would lead to widespread illness

C．Whether it is worthwhile to find out the number of people suffering from organophosphate poisoning

D．Whether organophosphate is a good pesticide