A widely cited claim that Santa Cruz County’s childhood cancer rate is 38% above the state average is muddling the debate about pesticide reform, writes Watsonville activist and retired nurse Kathleen Kilpatrick. The number doesn’t prove pesticides cause cancer and shouldn’t be used that way, she writes. But correcting that statistic doesn’t change the broader body of evidence linking pesticide exposure to childhood cancer and other serious health harms. Driscoll’s, the largest berry marketer in the world, has the resources to reduce its use of the most hazardous pesticides and should publicly show its progress, not debate cancer numbers, she writes.
Kathleen Kilpatrick
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Pesticide air monitoring in California is an illusion of protection: It reassures the public but fails to measure the real danger
For families in Watsonville and the Pajaro Valley, California’s pesticide air monitoring system offers the appearance of protection while leaving significant gaps in what is measured and how exposure risks are understood, writes retired nurse and healthcare activist Kathleen Kilpatrick. A single monitor is expected to represent vast agricultural regions where residents live, work and attend school near heavily sprayed fields, even though only a fraction of pesticides are tracked. She argues that the system reassures regulators more than communities, particularly as local residents face overlapping exposures from pesticides, air pollution and other environmental hazards. Real protection, she contends, requires reducing pesticide use near schools and neighborhoods — not simply expanding a monitoring network that captures only part of the problem.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Organophosphates are obsolete. Why are we still spraying them on our fields and endangering kids?
OPINION: Science has long warned that organophosphate pesticides damage developing brains, especially in pregnant women and children, writes local activist Kathleen Kilpatrick. Yet the Monterey Bay region remains a hotspot for exposure, with some of the highest rates in California.
