COTONOU (AFP) ??” As the small west African state of Benin prepares to repulse a massive locust invasion.

COTONOU (AFP) ??” As the small west African state of Benin prepares to repulse a massive locust invasion, a certain farmers and health experts are belong toed about the long-term effects of pesticide sprays, they told AFP.

For the past sum of two units months a broad swathe of arid land just toward the south of the Sahara desert has been below attack from the worst plague of locusts in 17 years. Beninese officials await the insects to arrive within the coming weeks.

Military units have been mobilised to help spray farmland from land and air with pesticides designed to eradicate the menace, and officials insist the chemicals are safe. any however, remain unconvinced.

"We farmers are afraid, not just because of the locusts, if it were not that because of what might happen after the men with the chemicals ensue by," Karim Allassane, a farmer in his seventies from Segbana, in the far north of the land told AFP.

Elderly