Mapping commercial practices of the pesticide industry to shape science and policymaking: a scoping review

There is a growing body of evidence for how health harming industries (HHIs) engage in similar practices to influence science and policymaking. However, limited attention has been paid to the pesticide industry within the commercial determinants of health (CDOH) field. We conducted a scoping review to map practices adopted by the pesticide industry to influence science and policymaking and to assess the breadth and focus of the associated literature. We included 31 documents and categorized the extracted data using a typology of commercial practices. The documents described how major pesticide companies, and their trade bodies, have acted to influence science and maintain favourable regulatory environments while undermining the credibility of researchers and agencies that publish findings threatening to their commercial interests. A large proportion of the literature consists of historical analyses, narrative reviews, commentaries/perspective pieces, and investigative reports published in the grey literature, predominantly informed by analysis of internal industry documents and freedom of information requests. Most studies focus on high-income settings. There were a limited number of primary peer-reviewed empirical studies that explicitly aimed to study the practices of the pesticide industry from a CDOH perspective. However, our findings show that major pesticide companies adopt political and scientific practices highly similar to other HHIs. The review shows a critical need for research on the pesticide industry’s current practices in low- and middle-income countries where the negative impacts of its activities on health and the environment are likely to be more marked.