County Issue: Pesticide Spraying

About 2.4 million pounds of 18 pesticides suspected of causing cancer or birth defects are used in Ventura County each year. About half is applied to crops from the air or ground. Many other chemicals including malathion also are applied to fields. Are you concerned about the effect aerial pesticide spraying has on residential areas?

Eloise Brown

Moorpark City Councilwoman

Absolutely! Why? Because I don’t believe there is any definitive clinical study that indicates there is no damage to animal life from malathion spraying. The malathion “bible” I have says you should keep small animals away from the spraying and you should shower and shampoo right away if you are in contact with it. I’m old enough to remember that DDT was supposed to be perfectly safe. And asbestos. My concern at the moment is with the aerial spraying because, regardless of guarantees, it is difficult to control Mother Nature’s winds. What brought me into this issue was an incident where a farmer leasing city land sprayed malathion by air on a weekend morning, and some residents living in a 290-unit apartment building near the site complained they were having respiratory problems. I felt there was no notice. They could have considered ground spraying instead of aerial spraying as one possible solution. . . . I went down there the morning of the spraying and you could smell it.

Frances Scharli

Founder of Mothers and Others for Safe Food

Yes, I am concerned about agricultural spraying, not only on residents but also as it contributes to air pollution and to produce--the fruits and vegetables brought to the market containing that spray. I am concerned about all aerial spraying but mostly about the 355 chemicals that have been identified by the Environmental Protection Agency as known carcinogens. . . . I really want to concentrate my efforts on those known carcinogens first because I’ve seen how difficult those are to get off the market and out of use. I believe consumers can make a difference. They can get pesticides off the market by using their purchasing power. If they don’t want chemicals sprayed on them, then they should be buying organically grown produce. A good example of consumer power is Alar. It was taken off the market because of consumer pressure. The EPA has still not acted. The consumers did it. The large grocery stores are doing a pretty good job to get organic produce, but I think the demand is not there. You can’t give up pesticides and have wormless, bugless, scarless produce.

Neil Moyer

President of the Environmental Coalition of Ventura County

This has been a troubling area in Ventura County because of our suburbanization. When I was at the Ventura Air Pollution Control District it was not unusual to receive a handful of complaints every year when a neighboring area got sprayed while a nearby ag field was being sprayed. As I understand it, the normal practice is for the agricultural commissioner to be informed 48 hours in advance of the aerial application. One would think if that process is carried out routinely and the information were made available to nearby home owners and area officials, fewer problems would result. Increasingly farm interests are finding that these pesticides bring on other problems such as worker safety, ground water contamination and other risks. Probably an effort should be made to wean farmers off pesticides and to encourage the use of other methods, in particular integrated pest management. That uses a multitude of approaches to pest control, including natural predators, mild doses of pesticides and the acceptance of a certain level of pest presence.

Dave Buettner

Chief Deputy Agricultural Commissioner for Ventura County

Of the 2.4 million pounds of pesticides used in Ventura County in 1988, about half was used for problems other than agriculture. Termite eradication, for example. Of the other half used in agriculture, only part of that was aerially sprayed. The rest was applied at ground level. Personally, I don’t have a concern with the application of aerial pesticides when used in accordance with current regulations. The regulations are strong enough to prevent any exposure and to protect the public. The way the regulations currently read require us to be notified 24 hours in advance when the more hazardous materials are being applied. We generally have good compliance, and the problems arise primarily when we have wind conditions and they haven’t stopped spraying. There is only one aerial applicator in the county so they have to be careful because they have their reputation to protect. One reason why the aerial application is necessary is that some crops, in particular tomatoes, beans and cucumbers, begin to cross over the furrows as they grow, so ground applications of pesticides cannot be made. A tractor would squash the plants.

Nick Sakovich

Farm adviser and member of Ventura County Food Safety Group

No. I think that basically we’ve taken enough precautions to ensure that it is a safe procedure. And by this I mean that research has been done on the toxicity of these materials, and there is usually a hundred- to a thousandfold safety feature built into the testing. The Department of Food and Agriculture has been testing produce for many years, and the majority of it tested to have no residues at all. So there is this hysteria even though the majority of the produce has no residue. We’re not saying that everything we do in agriculture is perfectly safe . . ., but the risk of drinking coffee, herbal teas, beer, wine, being struck by lightning . . . is a far greater risk than eating food that has a pesticide rating. In fact, a lot of foods like mushrooms and broccoli have natural residues that are more toxic. Also the machines we’re using now can detect minute levels and I think perhaps that is scaring people. The levels have always been there, but now we have the way to detect and measure. But in my opinion, who cares, because it is the dose that makes the toxin.