Sharing Neighborhood With Pesticides

Orange County ranks No. 1 statewide in the number of people residing close to areas where pesticides are heavily used, concludes a new report that calls for more intense state regulation.

Nearly 4 million Californians in all live within half a mile of land treated with known or suspected air contaminant pesticides, stirring concerns about human exposure to potentially dangerous airborne chemicals, says the report from the California Public Interest Group Charitable Trust.

Those people live not only in the farming communities of the Central Valley but in fast-growing suburban enclaves such as Orange and Ventura counties, the report found. Fresno County ranks second in the study, Ventura County third, Riverside County sixth, San Diego County 10th and Los Angeles County a distant 11th.

The report, released Wednesday, was immediately criticized by both state pesticide regulators and members of a major agricultural group, who called it alarmist, incomplete and lacking in science.

The study did not measure specific health problems caused by living near pesticides. But the report states that “given both the high mobility of these chemicals in the air and the numbers of people living near pesticide applications, widespread exposures and resulting impacts on public health may be inevitable.”

In a state where housing tracts are rising quickly alongside bean fields and strawberry farms, regulators need to act more forcefully to ensure that airborne pesticides do not threaten public health, the study’s authors state. They fault the state Department of Pesticide Regulation for what they call woefully inadequate enforcement of a law dating from the early 1980s intended to protect people from pesticides in the air.

“We know that a lot of these chemicals are being used, millions of pounds each year, and millions of people are living nearby,” said Jonathan Kaplan, toxics program coordinator for the CalPIRG Charitable Trust, a research and advocacy group.

The report calls for such changes as more stringent use of existing laws, expanded air monitoring, phasing out the riskiest pesticides and creating buffer zones of open land between homes and pesticide-rich farmland.

“Alternatives are at hand,” said Kaplan, one of the report’s authors. “The state needs to be guiding us toward them, and they’re not.”

State pesticide regulators and farming interests reacted quickly and testily, slamming the CalPIRG report and claiming that it ignores authoritative data.

“CalPIRG’s latest pronouncement is not a scientific study by any standard,” said James W. Wells, state pesticide regulation chief, in a written statement, “and CalPIRG’s statements about pesticides are clearly meant to frighten, rather than enlighten.”

Notes of Caution

The report is flawed because it merely looks at how close people live to pesticides, rather than measuring exposure levels, said Bob Krauter, spokesman for the California Farm Bureau Federation, the state’s largest farm organization.

“CalPIRG is trying to say [that] proximity equals risk. It’s like saying that if you’re standing on a street corner, you’re in danger of being run over by a car,” Krauter said. “People need to be extremely wary of a report like this.”

A UC Riverside professor also sounded a note of caution about judging the effects of pesticides.

“Just because it’s there doesn’t mean it’s bad. You have to look at the concentrations,” said Craig V. Byus, a professor of biomedical sciences and biochemistry and a member of a state scientific review panel examining airborne pesticides. Many factors must be weighed in assessing pesticide dangers, from amounts to how they travel, he said.

“I’m not saying that there isn’t a problem, but you have to analyze all that information to come to a conclusion,” Byus said.

CalPIRG officials acknowledged that the study did not look at dosage. “There’s not been enough monitoring to know the extent of the exposures caused by these chemicals,” Kaplan said. “The state doesn’t know how many people have been exposed, or how much.”

This is not the first time concerns have been raised about potential human exposure to pesticides in the so-called urban-agricultural frontier, areas where new suburban homes and farm fields form a mosaic of sometimes conflicting land uses. A 1995 study by the Washington-based Environmental Working Group found that Orange County led the state in the number of elementary schools and licensed day-care centers in close proximity to fumigated fields.

County Agricultural Commissioner Rick Le Feuvre said Wednesday that pesticides are being handled safely in the county.

One Irvine farmer said that unlike many counties, virtually no aerial pesticide spraying occurs in Orange County because of concerns about large numbers of people living nearby. Instead, some pesticides are applied with ground spraying and some injected in water through drip systems.

“The consequences of us messing up are intolerable. We have to be good neighbors,” said A.G. Kawamura, who farms 600 acres and sits on the State Board of Food and Agriculture.

The CalPIRG report found that total pesticide use in California rose 31% from 1991 to 1995, and the use of cancer-causing pesticides more than doubled.

Enforcement Debate

In particular, the CalPIRG report takes the state to task for what it calls slipshod enforcement of the state’s Toxic Air Contaminant Program, which is supposed to rank chemicals for their potential to taint the air and harm human health. The state is supposed to report on chemicals and regulate those found to pose significant risks. But the state conducted a full review process for only one chemical, ethyl parathion, since the law took effect 15 years ago, the report states.

State pesticide officials insist that the report shows only part of the enforcement picture. They said that other regulations can be used more quickly to react to chemical dangers.

“CalPIRG gives the impression that the only law we have is this toxic air contaminant law,” said Veda Federighi, spokesman for the pesticide regulation department.

“This is a tack hammer. Our other laws are sledgehammers. . . . We have a lot more effective and quicker ways to deal with pesticides than this law.”

CalPIRG also reports that pesticide air monitoring under the toxic air law is not conducted in 42 counties statewide, including Orange, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego. Those counties accounted for more than 30% of all pesticide use statewide in 1995, the report states.

The state counters that in its air monitoring for pesticides, it targets areas of highest use during peak use seasons, such as areas of the Central Valley where more pesticides are used. That practice is intended “to give us the highest possible air readings,” Federighi said.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

In Harm’s Way?

A fourth of Orange County residents live within half a mile of agricultural fields sprayed with dangerous pesticides, according to a report released Wednesday by a watchdog group. A look at pesticide exposure in Orange County and across Southern California:

Close to Home

Agricultural pesticide use in O.C., 1995

Pesticide Proximity

Southern Californians living with half a mile of pesticide use:

*--*

County No. People affected* Rank by No. % pop. affected Orange 663,900 1 27.5% Fresno 322,900 2 48.4 Ventura 286,600 3 55.1 Riverside 182,900 6 15.6 San Bernardino 181,100 7 12.8 Kern 147,300 9 27.1 San Diego 136,200 10 5.5 Los Angeles 132,100 11 1.5 Santa Barbara 130,300 13 35.3 San Luis Obispo 64,500 18 29.7 Imperial 60,700 21 55.5

*--*

* People living within half a mile of pesticide use exceeding 1,000 pounds per square mile per year

Graphics reporting by BRADY MacDONALD/Los Angeles Times

Source: Californians for Pesticide Reform