Many people ingest pesticides to self-harm and do not intend to kill themselves. Self-harm is often used for communication – to tell others how you feel, how angry you are.
Whether someone dies or not depends on the human toxicity of the pesticide they take. Ingestion of pesticides that are particularly toxic to humans often results in the person’s death. By contrast, ingesting other less toxic pesticides will cause mild or moderate poisoning, but will not result in death.
By restricting access to lethal pesticides, we can make self-harm much safer. This allows distressed people the time and space to find help. Because most acts of self-harm with pesticides are impulsive, people who survive rarely attempt suicide by using other means or try again with pesticides.
Allowing them to survive their act, by ensuring the pesticides to which they have access are of low toxicity to humans, will allow many people to survive and get on with their life.