Agro-chemical companies Monday rejected the recent findings by New Delhi-based Centre of Science and Environment (CSE) on high pesticide levels in Punjab farmers' blood.

CSE had reported that pesticide levels in the blood of farmers in some areas of Punjab was between 16 to 605 times higher than their American counterparts.

The Agro-chemical Promotion Group (APG), representing over 200 agro-chemical companies, said the findings were "unscientific, irresponsible, baseless, irrelevant, defective, unreliable and questionable."

The companies accused CSE director Sunita Narain of trying to create a scare, and announced they would initiate legal action against her and the CSE.

"Give me one instance in the last 40 years when a death has occurred due to pesticide being present in a human's blood," dared Salil Singhal, APG representative.

But reporters - who had filed several stories regarding excessive pesticide use leading to various diseases like cancer in Punjab - questioned him on how he could justify that pesticides being sold to uneducated farmers were not responsible for diseases.

Singhal said that the CSE study - with a sample of just 20 farmers - was not acceptable to the scientific community, nor was it as per international parameters.

He said that the APG had no plans to conduct a study on farmers to find if the alarming pesticide levels existed in their blood.