News Coverage
Pesticide near schools raises concern
State officials say regulations are adequate
Published October 13, 2002
When California officials three years ago unveiled stringent guidelines for safe exposure to the toxic pesticide methyl bromide, they pledged the new health standards would lead to better protections for schoolchildren and others in California's strawberry country.
But over the past two years, air-monitoring at Pajaro Middle School outside Watsonville and three other schools in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties have shown methyl bromide levels above the state's guidelines.
And state regulators refused to take steps to reduce them.
Instead, after heavy lobbying from the agriculture industry, officials at the Department of Pesticide Regulation backed off their initial assessment that the pesticide levels were ``unacceptable,'' announced that the guidelines were merely ``targets,'' and shelved a proposal to place tighter limits on methyl bromide use around schools. When a state judge stepped in to order more protections for schoolchildren, pesticide officials fought the order alongside the industry.
So far, no health problems at the schools have been linked to methyl bromide. And some temporary restrictions are now in place around two schools, but only because a local agriculture commissioner acted to settle a lawsuit filed by farmworker advocates.
Department of Pesticide Regulation director Paul Helliker said recently that the pesticide levels represented ``no immediate health concern.'' But a review of scores of records indicates that the state chose to ignore its own review of research suggesting there could be health risks to children.
``They are an agency that simply spends a lot more time and energy thinking about industry than public health,'' charged Bill Walker, West Coast director of the Environmental Working Group, part of a coalition that successfully sued the Department of Pesticide Regulation.
The department has long faced criticism for deferring to industry; in the mid-'90s, its chief deputy was a former pesticide lobbyist. Few activities have drawn more complaints than its regulation of methyl bromide.
The highly toxic gas, which is injected into the ground before planting, is classified as a ``Category 1 Acute Toxin,'' the most poisonous class. It can be fatal to humans in large doses, and long-term exposure to lower concentrations has been shown to cause severe neurological problems and organ damage in animals.
Still, California's $700 million strawberry industry considers methyl bromide a vital tool. And although an international treaty will ban it in 2005 because it is depleting the Earth's ozone layer, growers have lobbied successfully to push back earlier phase-outs instituted by state and federal authorities.
But in January 2000, after environmental groups won a suit against the state, the department announced new limits on methyl bromide use. Among them were a prohibition on the chemical's application near schools when students are in class.
At the same time, after an extensive review of scientific research, state officials developed comprehensive guidelines for safe exposure to methyl bromide with assistance from the National Academy of Sciences. The department promised even more regulation in the future, and in fall 2000, the state monitored methyl bromide in the air for eight weeks at a dozen sites around California, including on the grounds of five Monterey Bay area schools.
Among them was Pajaro Middle School.
The low-income, overwhelmingly Latino school, which is tucked into an industrial neighborhood just over the Pajaro River from Watsonville, sits in the middle of one of the country's most productive strawberry-growing regions. Down the road from the school are a packing plant and a cannery. In back of the school, tractors roll across fields near the baseball diamond.
The 2000 tests, which were released early last year, showed methyl bromide concentrations at Pajaro Middle School of 7.7 parts per billion, nearly eight times the state's recommended health level of 1 part per billion for long-term exposures. Concentrations were 3.8 parts per billion at La Joya Elementary School in Salinas and 2.6 parts per billion at Salsipuedes Elementary School in Watsonville.
The test results provoked alarm in the Pajaro Valley Unified School District, and the school board called on the state to ``commit all necessary resources'' to resolve ``health concern issues.''
Debbie Smith, whose two sons went to Pajaro, received a flier about the air tests. ``We were very worried,'' Smith recalled. ``But we hoped they knew what they were doing.''
The pesticide department at first appeared disturbed. Top department officials, including director Helliker, twice called the levels ``unacceptable.'' And Helliker wrote the Pajaro schools superintendent to tell him the department ``shares your concerns.''
In May 2001, the department published a list of possible remedies including enlarging existing buffer zones around schools where methyl bromide would not be applied and capping the amount that could be used near schools.
But five weeks later, the department announced there would be no new restrictions.
In those weeks, the state's agriculture industry mounted an intense lobbying campaign, according to documents obtained from the department and other sources including the Public Education Center, a public-interest group in Washington, D.C.
The powerful Western Growers Association complained that the proposed rules were ``just too draconian.'' The California Strawberry Commission warned they would have ``devastating economic consequences.'' And an executive with Hollister-based TriCal, one of state's largest methyl bromide companies, wrote Helliker that new regulations ``will illustrate the lack of support ... for production agriculture.''
The methyl bromide industry's attorney attacked the tests' accuracy and called the health guidelines ``needlessly conservative and, therefore, inappropriate.'' The industry is pressing to relax the guidelines.
When it announced its decision not to act, the pesticide department said its guidelines were only ``targets.'' The department also maintained that its existing regulations on the application of methyl bromide would bring concentrations below the health guidelines. Those regulations, announced in January 2000, had not taken effect when the air tests were conducted.
``We took the position we did because of the facts,'' Helliker said recently, saying his department did not yield to industry pressure.
He also said he had called the concentrations ``unacceptable'' in reference only to exposure over several years. ``It was not a situation that was tenable in the long run,'' he explained. When he and his chief deputy used the term a year before, neither made such a distinction.
In Pajaro, response to the Department of Pesticide Regulation's decision not to impose new restrictions was muted.
Many parents contacted by the Mercury News declined to talk about the pesticide issue. ``Most are scared,'' said Aurelio Gonzalez, a local school board candidate whose parents were farmworkers. ``A lot of them work for farmers, and farmers don't want troublemakers.''
Pajaro Principal Jackie Defendis said some teachers remain concerned, but she said she never heard much from parents.
John McCann, who manages environmental health and safety for the Pajaro Valley schools, said the district deferred to the state. ``They are the experts,'' he said.
Pajaro's schoolchildren ultimately did receive some new protections, but only after California Rural Legal Assistance, a longtime farmworker advocate, sued on behalf of a parent in August 2001.
Eight days after the suit was filed, a Monterey County judge ordered a temporary halt to methyl bromide applications around schools. Three months later, a second judge extended the order and directed authorities to implement more protections for schoolchildren.
But the pesticide department -- joined by methyl bromide companies, growers and the local agricultural commissioner -- appealed.
And five months later, the department again refused to impose new protections after the second set of air tests taken in 2001 showed concentrations that -- although lower -- still exceeded health guidelines, contrary to what the department had predicted.
At Pajaro and La Joya Elementary School the concentrations remained about three times the recommended health level. And at MacQuiddy Elementary School in Watsonville, which had not been tested the year before, the concentration was 5 1/2 times the recommended level.
Ultimately, the Monterey County Agricultural Commissioner, rather than the Department of Pesticide Regulation, acted.
To settle the lawsuit, the commissioner -- after learning that no growers near the schools planned to apply methyl bromide this fall -- prohibited its use within 1,500 feet of Pajaro and La Joya. The ban is just for this year.
The Department of Pesticide Regulation promised only to consider new regulations in the future.