Endocrine Emergency

Farmers, families, and frontline workers are showing signs of exposure to toxic chemicals.

- Dr. Waseem Ahmad

In the villages of Pulwama and Shopian, apples are a badge of pride and progress. Families have tended these orchards for generations. They know how to prune branches, read the sky for hail, and time the harvest to perfection.

But lately, a darker knowledge has taken root.

Mothers speak in hushed tones about daughters who can’t conceive. Young men queue at clinics for unexplained spinal pain.

In one village of 1,400 homes, 15 cancer cases have emerged in just a few years.

I began noticing these patterns during training sessions and outreach camps held in South Kashmir. Women from orchardist households would stay behind after the formal sessions ended.

“Why are we seeing so many girls who can’t get pregnant?” one woman in Shopian asked. “Our mothers never talked about this. It’s something new.”

They are right. It is new, and it’s spreading.

In Srinagar’s diagnostic labs, young radiologists are alarmed. They perform 20 to 25 scans a day, often over grueling 12-hour shifts.

Over half of their patients now come from South Kashmir, and a worrying share show early signs of spinal degeneration, liver stress, and even brain tumors.

Lab technologists, too, are seeing a surge in hormonal disorders: thyroid dysfunction, PCOD, early menopause.

These complaints form a pattern, and all arrows point back to the orchards.

What changed?

Ten years ago, an average orchardist used just three or four sprays a year, mostly harmless horticultural oil and occasional antifungals.

Today, farmers apply up to 20 chemical treatments per season, and the sprays are no longer benign.