What You Don't Know Could Hurt You

EWG Air Monitoring Finds Toxic Pesticides Drifting From California Farm Fields

By Bill, January 1999

Airborne Poisons Found in More than 60 Percent of Tests

Independent air monitoring in eight California counties by Environmental Working Group found that toxic pesticides routinely drift from farm fields into surrounding neighborhoods and schoolyards. Of 94 air samples collected for EWG's Community Monitoring Project from June 1996 to September 1998, 60 samples, or 64 percent, detected pesticides known to cause cancer, brain damage, birth defects, acute poisoning or other illnesses. Air monitoring was conducted at 22 different locations; at 19 sites, drifting pesticides were detected in the air. (Table 1.)

These findings - derived from almost twice as many air monitoring tests as state pesticide regulators have conducted this decade - corroborate the overwhelming statistical evidence that pesticide air pollution in agricultural regions of California is a real phenomenon, and a real problem. An EWG analysis of the latest available state data estimates that more than 100 million pounds of pesticide pollution drifts or evaporates each year from farm fields and vineyards into the air Californians breathe.

According to 1995 data from the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR), there were 303 reports of individuals exposed to pesticide drift in 1995 - almost one case of exposure in the state per day. (DPR 1997) (Table 2.) This figure should be considered conservative in light of reports from agricultural communities that some local officials are reluctant to report drift incidents and tend to dismiss residents' complaints.

In almost all documented cases of pesticide drift, DPR maintains that the levels of potential exposure did not pose a danger to public health. Indeed, levels of airborne pesticides detected by EWG monitoring were in most cases relatively small. But exposure to low levels of airborne pesticides should not be misconstrued as safe. Health-based safety standards for most pesticides in air have not been established. Those that do exist are not set to protect children and other sensitive populations but are based on supposedly safe levels of exposure for the average adult. Furthermore, they account only for exposure to individual pesticides, not to combinations of chemicals often drifting off of treated fields. For communities near heavy pesticide use, the issue is not whether the amount of poison in the air is "safe," according to the DPR, but the right not to be poisoned at all.

Pesticide air pollution affects millions of Californians: residents of communities near application sites, children and teachers at nearby schools, and farm workers and farm families who may breathe pesticide-laden air at work and home. Yet pesticide air pollution is poorly controlled due to a gaping loophole in state air pollution regulations. Unlike all other air pollutants, pesticides are not regulated by the California Air Resources Board (ARB), but instead are under the purview of the Department of Pesticide Regulation - an agency whose stated policy is that it is not necessary to reduce or eliminate use of toxic pesticides, as long as the public's exposure is "limited." Responding to a 1997 analysis of state data by Californians for Pesticide Reform (CPR), a statewide coalition including EWG, that found a dramatic increase in pesticide use, a DPR spokeswoman said: "Increased spraying does not equate to increased risk if you control the exposure, and we control the exposure." (Arax 1997)

In fact there is no evidence that DPR adequately controls exposure. The agency rarely even attempts to measure exposure through air testing. It allows pesticides to be applied in close proximity to homes and schools, and even closer proximity to farm workers in adjacent fields. It virtually refuses to add pesticides to the list of chemicals regulated as air pollution. It is a central premise of this report that under the conditions that have prevailed during the Wilson Administration - the huge and rapidly increasing volume of pesticides used in California; growth patterns that are turning once-isolated agricultural communities into densely populated suburbs; and DPR's failure to monitor the air for pesticide drift or regulate pesticides as air pollution - it is virtually impossible to adequately control exposure.

DPR's head-in-the-sand attitude, symptomatic of the agency's longstanding accommodation of agricultural interests at the expense of public health, has allowed pesticide air pollution to effectively escape monitoring and needed controls. Pesticides enjoy this regulatory holiday even though an EWG analysis found that pesticide use is a larger source of one of the major forms of toxic air pollution in California (reactive organic gases such as benzene and other solvents) than petroleum refining and all other stationary industrial sources of these smog-forming gases.

Under a 1983 California law (AB 1807), chemicals designated as toxic air contaminants (TACs) by the state are subject to increased monitoring and mitigation efforts to protect public health. DPR, which has authority over whether or not pesticides are designated as TACs, has shown a cavalier disrespect for the entire listing process. State records show that while the ARB has placed 20 other air pollutants on the TAC list since 1983, DPR has taken similar action on just one pesticide - and then only after that pesticide had already been banned by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Worse, the record also shows that while ARB requires extensive monitoring for TACs across the state, pesticide air pollution is virtually unmonitored by DPR.

Each year, the ARB analyzes more than 16,000 air samples for over 50 TACs, performing a total of more than 60,000 individual chemical analyses annually. (ARB 1996) DPR routinely analyzes the air for none. Since 1991, excluding a few special monitoring projects, DPR has monitored the air for pesticides just 50 times in 14 locations.¹ Out of more than 600 pesticides registered for use in California - approximately 150 of which have been identified by federal or state agencies as TAC candidates - DPR has tested the air for fewer than 30.

In many counties with heavy pesticide use, no air samples have ever been taken or analyzed for pesticides by the DPR. From 1991 to 1995, more than 4.2 million separate applications of pesticides were reported in California, making DPR's sampling record approximately one test for every 84,000 applications in the state. Even in counties with heavy pesticide use, DPR's record is not much better. In the top three counties for number of pesticide applications each year - Fresno, Tulare and Monterey - DPR sampled the air for pesticides just 21 times from 1991 through the present, an average of one test for approximately every 69,000 pesticide applications.

All of which leaves Californians to fend for themselves. In this light, perhaps the most disturbing finding of the Community Monitoring Project is the lack of a public right to know when and what pesticides will be applied to a given field, even when that field is located directly adjacent to homes, schools and businesses. In California - home of the nation's most comprehensive program for pesticide data collection and reporting - timely information about pesticide use in local communities is scarce and difficult to obtain due to an indifferent or openly hostile bureaucracy and a political tradition of accommodation of the agrichemical industry. These barriers inhibit citizens' rights to know about local pesticide use and the accompanying right to avoid exposure.

The bottom line: Even though pesticides are a significant source of toxic air pollution, Californians living near sprayed fields have no guaranteed or uniform access to find out what pesticides are being applied adjacent to their homes or the schools where they send their children. If you have time, persistence and know where to look, it is possible to learn which agricultural poisons were sprayed near your home, school or business three years ago - but a daunting task to find out what will be sprayed tomorrow or next week.

Recommendations

Pesticide air pollution is, in at least one respect, no different than industrial air pollution. It is a routine and inevitable consequence of pesticide use, not merely the accidental result of "agricultural chemicals" being blown off-site. Agriculture is in fact the largest industry in California, and as a significant contributor of toxic air emissions, should be regulated as such. On DPR's watch, however, pesticide air pollution has largely escaped monitoring and regulation, placing many Californians at risk of exposure to toxic chemicals known to have serious health effects.

In the face of DPR's persistent failure to effectively address increasing pesticide use, widespread evidence of pesticide drift and growing community concern over exposure of the public to pesticide air pollution, EWG and CPR urge the State of California to:

• Transfer authority for the regulation of pesticides in air from DPR to the California Air Resources Board. The ARB is a recognized world leader in public health protections from air pollution. Without question, ARB has greater expertise in air pollution monitoring, risk assessment and standard-setting than the Department of Pesticide Regulation. The agency responsible for regulating pesticides in air should be committed to recognizing, assessing and reducing risk, not to ignoring evidence of problems. Californians living in counties with heavy pesticide air pollution should not be denied the protections that ARB's regulations extend to other residents of the state.

• Direct the ARB to conduct routine monitoring of pesticide applications to determine the need for increased buffer zones and other measures needed to protect the public from pesticide active ingredients and reactive organic gases from pesticide formulations drifting off-site after applications.

• Mandate 72-hour written notice to all homes, schools and businesses within 1,000 feet of a field before the application of any pesticide known or suspected to cause cancer, brain or nerve damage, or reproductive disorders.

• Guarantee that agricultural workers will be given the same degree of protection from potential pesiticide exposure as people who live near application sites.

• Require growers, in their annual applications for use of restricted pesticides, to list less-toxic alternatives to the chemicals they plan to use.

• Provide all Californians with easy, localized access to information about recent and pending pesticide applications in their communities.

• Order DPR to adopt a policy of reducing and eliminating the use of the most dangerous pesticides, with an aggressive plan and an accelerated timetable for implementation. To facilitate this goal, the state must immediately and significantly increase funding for research into non-toxic alternatives to chemical pesticides.

Note

¹ DPR contracts with ARB for almost all of its air monitoring. When this report refers to "DPR tests," we mean routine tests for pesticides in air performed by ARB staff at DPR's request. Results of all general monitoring studies performed up to 1995 were published both by DPR and in professional journals. In addition, DPR's Environmental Monitoring Branch conducts occasional special studies in response to accidents, citizen complains and other urgent situations. Such a monitoring program is now underway in Lompoc, following years of residents' complaints about spraying and after state health studies found elevated rates of cancer in the community. Over the last two decades, DPR (and its predecessor agency) has conducted about two dozen of these special studies - an average of about one per year. Results from these studies have never been published in a comprehensive or standardized format, therefore we did not include them in our analysis.