Quick Take
Ann López, executive director of the Center for Farmworker Families, takes on four pervasive “deceptions” about pesticides in our community. California does not have the most rigorous regulations in the world; far from it, she writes – and in Santa Cruz County, where only 23% of crop report value is from organic farms, we can and must do better.
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At the Center for Farmworker Families, we have worked with and served farmworkers in the Pajaro and Salinas valleys for more than two decades. During this time, we have seen relentless harm to farmworker communities from pesticides – not just the headaches, the skin rashes and the nausea that eventually subside, but more permanently asthma, learning disabilities, birth defects and cancer. And children are often the victims.
As persistent as the harms we have seen from pesticide exposure are the deceptions about pesticides from regulators and growers perpetuating the myths about safety. They are repeated so often that we constantly encounter people who believe them. Here are some of the worst:
“California has the most rigorous pesticide regulations in the world.”
Not true.
More than 130 pesticides used annually in our state are banned or not approved for use in the 27 countries of the European Union (EU). In Santa Cruz County, two-thirds of all the pesticides applied by pounds are banned in the EU. By continuing to allow the use of such highly hazardous pesticides, our regulators aren’t rigorous; they are allowing the deliberate poisoning of our people.
PESTICIDES IN THE PAJARO VALLEY: Read more Lookout news and Community Voices opinion coverage here
“No chemical exceeded its regulatory target.”
Deception.
That bureaucrat-speak is often interpreted as: “Oh, good, I’m safe then.”
But let’s take a look at the second most used pesticide in Santa Cruz County, cancer-causing 1,3-dichloropropene. The state’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) has determined the lifetime cancer risk threshold for 1,3-D exposure is an average of 3.7 micrograms per day, the equivalent of breathing air concentrated with 1,3-D at 0.04 parts per billion (ppb). One of the state’s six pesticide air monitors sits on the grounds of Ohlone Elementary School in Pajaro Valley Unified School District. The average 1,3-D air concentration since the Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) began monitoring at the end of 2011 is more than twice OEHHA’s cancer risk level at 0.09 ppb.
Yet DPR says 1,3-D levels have not “exceeded the regulatory target.”
How’s that?
DPR has simply ignored its sister CalEPA department OEHHA when it comes to schoolkids, setting the lifetime cancer risk target 14 times higher at 0.56 ppb. By the way, the 0.56 ppb target is the one 1,3-D manufacturer Dow called for when OEHHA was determining the California standard.
The essential lesson is: Do not trust DPR.
DPR’s funding sources are the pesticide industries, the sources of health problems everywhere.
“There are no viable alternatives” to a particular pesticide or group of pesticides.”
Not true.
Most, if not everything, grown in California is also grown organically.
In Santa Cruz County 23% of total crop report value is from organic farms. Using 1,3-D as an example again, 40 countries have banned it, and many have large strawberry industries.
My nonprofit along with other local community groups have sued DPR over illegal permitting of 1,3-D and other pesticides, only to hear in court representatives from Big Ag saying that fumigant use on strawberry fields is so expensive that “If this tool was not necessary, it would not be used.”
Yet, I heard an Ohlone Elementary School teacher at a recent Safe Ag Safe Schools meeting say sarcastically, “Has nobody informed the organic strawberry grower across the street from where I teach of this ‘necessity’?” There are plenty of viable alternatives to applying industrial poisons on our food.
“The safety of farmworkers continues to be our highest priority.”
Not true.
As economic refugees of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), most farmworkers are viewed as a labor force designed to work at a job that no one else wants to do, while compromising their own lives with overwork in the field, poverty, lack of medical insurance and pesticides.
In her 2005 book “Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating,” famed primatologist and anthropologist Jane Goodall wrote, “Someday we shall look back on this dark era of agriculture and shake our heads. How could we have ever believed that it was a good idea to grow our food with poisons?”
Indeed.
Ann López is the executive director of the Center for Farmworker Families and author of “The Farmworkers’ Journey.”