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At RiskHow Much Toxic Pesticide Is Used Near Your Child's School?
Environmental Working Group press release- Feb. 21, 2001 EWG's new website, ewg.org, provides detailed information on all pesticides used within 1.5 miles of every school in California in 1998, the latest year for which records are available. Click on a county, then click on a school to see the total amount of pesticides applied, details on each chemical used, or how your school compares to others in the county. "Every parent, and everyone else who cares about our children's health, has a right to know what toxic chemicals kids might be exposed to at school," said Bill Walker, EWG's California director. "When we send our kids off to school, we expect them to spend the day in a safe environment."
The California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) has just released a report on pesticide monitoring at five Central Coast schools, that found average airborne levels of the acutely toxic fumigant methyl bromide more than twice as high as state scientists say is safe for children. Last summer, an EWG air sampling program detected dangerously high levels of chlorpyrifos, a neurotoxic pesticide recently banned for home use as unsafe for children, in the air around Fresno. (The air sampling report, released Feb. 20 in Fresno, is also available at this link.) Last week, another new DPR report said reported cases of pesticide poisoning increased by 20 percent statewide in 2000, and pesticide drift was the most common cause. A National Cancer Institute researcher who matched pesticide data and medical records in 10 California agricultural counties recently reported that pregnant women living up to 9 miles away from farms where pesticides are used may have an increased risk of losing an unborn child to birth defects. EWG is a non-profit research organization with offices in Oakland, Seattle and Washington, D.C. EWG uses information technology to inform the public about environmental threats to public health, especially the health of children.
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Californians for Pesticide Reform From the Spring 2001 issue of the Environmental News. |
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Children's developing bodies and brains are known to be more susceptible to the harmful effects of toxic pesticides, but thousands of California children attend schools directly adjacent to or surrounded by fields where pesticide use totals tens of thousands of pounds a year. State and independent studies show not only that pesticides routinely drift from farm fields onto nearby school campuses, but that drifting pesticides pose health risks for people miles away from the fields: