In the most recent of Georgina Downs’ many applications to various courts, she was asked to consider what her life would be like if things had been different. “If I was healthy my life would be completely different,” says Georgina, now 37. “I like to think I would have been married with children. There wouldn’t be the restrictions on what I can and can’t do.” But, she says very quickly, everyone has to adapt to their situation and she doesn’t want to dwell on it. “I’m not the issue,” she insists. “The campaign is the issue.”

For the past ten years, Georgina has been fighting for an overhaul of the laws in the UK that allow pesticides to be sprayed near residential areas, schools and workplaces.

The laws are based on the idea that, while many of the pesticides used are toxic, a bystander suffering occasional exposure won’t find themselves in any real trouble. Georgina is arguing that crop spraying happens near areas where people are constantly exposed to the chemicals causing a range of chronic medical conditions.

In the early 1980s, the Downs family moved to a small village near Chichester, West Sussex, where they built their dream home. Georgina’s health began to decline. She had headaches, flu-like symptoms and blisters in her mouth and throat. In 1991 she found herself in hospital with severe muscle wastage and weakness but no one could explain what was wrong. Then, sitting at home one day, she saw a tractor spraying crops in the adjoining field. She says: “Following some initial inquiries, I was astonished to discover the tractor was actually spraying a cocktail of poisonous chemicals into the air where we live and breathe, and even more astonished to find out that a farmer is permitted to do so under existing government policy.”

In 2001, after several years of sofa surfing with friends in the summer to avoid the spraying season and chronic health problems forced her to turn her back on hopes of a career in musical theatre, she decided it was time to fight back. Georgina says: “I remember thinking there had to be something seriously wrong with the Government’s policy. I decided I would do everything I could to try to change it.”

From there, she set up the UK Pesticides Campaign and began collecting statements from people who claimed to have suffered the ill effects of crop spraying. Soon people were contacting her from all over the country. It wasn’t long before she had amassed a vast database of such statements.

As an inexperienced campaigner, Georgina thought getting a change in the law would only take a year. Ten years later, she has won a landmark case at the High Court ruling the Government’s policy on pesticides unlawful, had it overturned and has now applied to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, arguing the crop spraying is a violation of her right to live peacefully in her home.

While waiting to hear from Strasbourg there is motion closer to home as well. There has recently been a consultation on pesticide use with an announcement due later in the year on the new coalition Government’s plans for pesticide policy. Georgina says: “I’m waiting for a response from David Cameron. I wrote to him to point out the new government has the chance to put the protection of human health over business interests. Hopefully they will do what the previous government failed to do in 13 years.”

Georgina is surprisingly circumspect about her situation where others may well be angry.

She says: “I feel strongly about it, of course, because so many people have had their health and lives ruined. Any anger I have is channelled into determination. I won’t give up until things have changed.”

And what about moving house? Georgina says the health problems of her and her parents are permanent so won’t be solved by moving. She says: “Why should people be forced out of their own home because of what someone else is allowed to do to the people in that home? If we leave and another young family moves in it will just start all over again for them. I couldn’t have the thought of that on my mind.”

* Visit Georgina’s website, www.pesticidescampaign.co.uk for more details.