Pesticide Exposure Threatens Children
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According to an investigation by the Associated Press, thousands of
children in California and other agricultural states have potentially been
exposed to pesticides linked to brain damage and birth defects.
Although no federal laws regulate spraying pesticides near schools, eight
states have laws that create buffer zones to protect schools from
pesticides. Advocates for increased regulation say that not enough is done by
states or the federal government to address the problem.  Garance Burke,
The Washington Post  05/16/2007


Read Article: The Washington Post
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/15/AR2007051501123.html?hpid=sec-health

AP: Children Face Exposure to Pesticides


By GARANCE BURKE
The Associated Press
Tuesday, May 15, 2007; 9:05 PM


STRATHMORE, Calif. -- On Grandparents Day, Domitila Lemus accompanied
her 8-year-old granddaughter to school. As the girls lined up behind
Sunnyside Union Elementary, a foul mist drifted onto the playground from
the adjacent orange groves, witnesses say. Lemus started coughing, and
two children collapsed in spasms, vomiting on the blacktop.

She and the little girls have since recovered without apparent lasting
effects. But an Associated Press investigation has found that over the
past decade, hundreds, possibly thousands, of schoolchildren in
California and other agricultural states have been exposed to farm chemicals
linked to sickness, brain damage and birth defects. The family of at
least one California teenager suspects pesticides caused her death.

There are no federal laws specifically against spraying near schools,
and advocates say California and the seven other states that have laws
or policies creating buffer zones around schools to protect them from
pesticides don't do enough to enforce them.

"The regulations are inadequate. In the vast majority of cases, people
who didn't follow the laws received at best a $400 fine," said Margaret
Reeves, a scientist with the Pesticide Action Network, a nonprofit
organization based in San Francisco.

The pesticide industry says it is committed to safety, and regulators
say they are doing their best to enforce the laws.

"Everyone wants to protect children," said California Department of
Pesticide Regulation spokesman Glenn Brank. He said his agency is doing
what it can to enforce the law with a shortage of agricultural
inspectors.

In the Strathmore incident last November, grandparents said the
spraying was being done less than 150 feet from the children. Tulare County
authorities fined an unlicensed pest removal company $1,100 for spraying
a restricted weed killer that morning. But no action was taken over
what witnesses said happened to the children.

Because no one reported the incident as a case of pesticide drift,
county agricultural inspectors never swabbed the jungle gym or took grass
samples, making it impossible to establish whether pesticide had, in
fact, drifted onto the playground.

The Environmental Protection Agency does not keep comprehensive
national figures on students and teachers sickened by drifting pesticide.

In California, the No. 1 farm state and the one with the best records,
there were 590 pesticide-related illnesses at schools from 1996 to
2005, according to figures given to the AP by the state. More than a third
of those were due to pesticide drift, the figures show. Activists say
that those numbers are low and that many cases are never even reported.

In California's long, flat interior, spraying season lasts seven
months, from March through September. When citrus trees blossom and
grapevines climb trellises, Lemus prays to the Virgin Mary that her
granddaughter won't come home with her eyes watering and head pounding, unable to
breathe.

Tulare County, where she lives, is one of the nation's most fertile
farm regions, with more than half the schools within a quarter-mile of
agricultural fields, according to the nonprofit Center on Race, Poverty
and the Environment.

As suburbs push close to farmland, the rate of pesticide poisoning
among children nationwide has risen in recent years, according to a 2005
study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study found
that 40 percent of all children sickened by pesticides at school were
victims of drift _ pesticide carried on the breeze.

Research on pregnant women exposed to common pesticides has suggested
higher rates of premature birth, and poor neurological development and
smaller head circumferences among their babies.

The effects on children of small, repeated exposures over a long period
of time are unclear, said University of California, Berkeley
epidemiologist Brenda Eskenazi.

But acute pesticide poisoning can cause nausea, blurred vision, an
abnormally fast heart rate, paralysis and death.

Chrissy Garavito, a 15-year-old high school sophomore, died in Fontana
in 1997 of a heart rhythm disturbance her mother believes was triggered
by exposure to chemicals sprayed at the school. Authorities never
confirmed that pesticides contributed to her death.

In 2001, pesticide poisoning nearly killed Elena Dominguez, then a
sixth-grader in Wenatchee, Wash.

One day, after playing Frisbee during gym class across the street from
an apple orchard, she passed out at her desk.

"She was in a stupor," said her mother, Cindy Dominguez. "She couldn't
talk, her eyes were rolling back in her head."

Emergency room doctors dismissed Elena's abnormally fast heart rate as
a symptom of dehydration, gave her intravenous fluids and sent her
home. Three weeks later, it happened again.

"I was at a track meet and all of a sudden I felt really, really
tired," said Elena, now 18. "I made it to the finish line and just fell
over."

Investigators found her clothes were soaked in the pesticide Endosulfan
I; it had been picked up from residue on the grass and absorbed into
her bloodstream through her skin. Officials later found five other
pesticides on school grounds and fined the apple grower for forging his
applicator's license.

The Dominguez family sued the orchard owner and the Wenatchee school
district, which established rules requiring students to stay inside after
a spraying, among other things. State officials believe it is the only
district in Washington with such limitations.

But keeping students inside may not be enough. Two years ago, 600
students and staff members were evacuated from an Edinburg, Texas,
elementary school after pesticides drifted from a cotton field into the school's
air conditioning system. Thirty-nine people developed nausea and
headaches.

EPA officials say they have no real idea how often pesticides waft onto
school grounds. The EPA must register pesticides before they are sold,
but federal law does not restrict where they can be sprayed.

"We implement the laws that Congress gives us," said Ruth Allen, an EPA
epidemiologist.

Once the EPA approves a product, federal law requires manufacturers to
report any "unreasonable adverse effects on the environment of the
pesticide" that their products cause. Activists say industry is essentially
allowed to police itself.

CropLife America, a national organization representing suppliers of
farm pesticides, said their use near schools is well-regulated.

"We're really committed to public safety," said spokeswoman Donna
Uchida. "Any kind of use of a pesticide has a labeling requirement that is
imposed to protect human health and the environment."

California has some of the strictest pesticide laws in the nation.
Under state law, growers and pest control companies can be fined if
pesticide drifts from a field and sickens people.

A 2002 state law allows county authorities to establish a no-spray
buffer zone of a quarter-mile around schools. But Tulare County has not
done so. State officials said they did not know how many counties have set
up such buffer zones.

Lemus and environmentalists are pushing for pesticide-free zones
throughout California.

"Why don't they tell us they'll spray beforehand so we can bring our
children inside?" Lemus said.