Pesticide Exposure in Schools
Guest Blogger Mary Flodin on Pesticide Exposure in the Schools
Autism spectrum disorders, ADHD, and other neurobehavioral challenges are on the rise. As a teacher in Central California public schools over the past thirty years, I’ve witnessed an alarming increase in learning and social/emotional disabilities. This epidemic of learning and behavioral challenges is not limited to any one socio-economic or cultural class. Affluent and well-educated parents with access to excellent pre-natal care are being hit as hard as the poor.
What’s going on? There are many theories: vaccinations, GMO’s and other modifications to our food, exposure to electronic devices and to a wide variety of environmental pollutants . . . As is the case with most of our contemporary maladies, it’s difficult to identify any single “smoking gun” responsible for causing this widespread outbreak of neurological harm. However in California, one factor that researchers have now linked to the rise in childhood neurological disorders is pesticides.
Two studies – the CHAMACOS Study by UC Berkeley researchers and the MIND Institute study out of UC Davis – support a connection between pesticide exposure and neurobehavioral damage to the young. More on these studies can be found in the California Health Report article Dangerous Drift by Lily Dayton.
I first became aware of the problem of pesticide drift into the schools in the 1980’s, when I was teaching in a Watsonville elementary school surrounded by strawberry fields. At that time, my colleagues and I were passionately focused on providing our students with an excellent learning experience. We paid little attention to what was going on in the strawberry fields on the other side of the chain link fence. But when we realized that the incidence of cancer, asthma, developmental delays, and behavioral disorders at our school was abnormally high, we started asking questions. It soon became obvious that the pesticides being used on the other side of the fence were making people sick.
When we obtained copies of the pesticide use permits for the strawberry fields surrounding our school, we discovered that a whole suite of deadly poisons, many of them developed for chemical warfare, were drifting into our classrooms. At that point, I joined with other teachers, parents, and community members to found Farm Without Harm. The organization’s mission was to educate people about the dangers of pesticide exposure, to transform public policy, and to help facilitate the transition to sustainable agricultural practices.
Unfortunately, over the past decade, use of soil fumigants overall has actually increased 20 percent. Today, Californians living in agricultural regions have a 69 times higher risk of poisoning from pesticide drift than residents of other regions.
Although the pesticide of greatest concern in the 1990’s, Methyl Bromide, is finally beginning to be phased out, Chlorpyrifos (one of the Organophosphate class of pesticides that was the subject of the CHAMACOS study), Glyphosate (Round Up), Chloropicrin (tear gas), and the carcinogenic 1,3-D/Telone – all pesticides of great concern – are in widespread use today in Central California. There are currently no standardized state-wide regulations about how close to schools, hospitals, shopping centers, and residential areas these acutely toxic chemicals, prone to drift, can be used.
Over the past year, the Safe Strawberry Working Group, a Monterey Bay area subcommittee of Californians for Pesticide Reform and Pesticide Action Network, has been meeting with the county agricultural commissioners, boards of supervisors, and state officials to promote new state policies restricting pesticide use near schools, including no-spray “buffer zones”. We’ve also supported the proposed ban on brain-harming, lung-damaging Chlorpyrifos and restrictions on the use of the carcinogenic endocrine disruptor Glyphosate (Roundup).
The Monterey Bay community continues to be at the forefront of pesticide reform activism in California, as it has been for half a century. Last year in the Monterey Bay area, thousands signed petitions and letters to pesticide regulators; hundreds attended public events, meetings, and actions; dozens spoke at news conferences and public meetings; dozens more wrote to or were quoted in news media; and yet more dozens met with local and state officials. We are now on the brink of a truly hopeful moment with never-before opportunities to reduce the threats of hazardous pesticides. This year, we’ll need to do even more.
Please join us in planning and carrying out this year’s campaigns to improve the health of our children and our community through reducing the threats of hazardous pesticides. If this issue is of concern to you and you’d like to make a difference, you are invited to attend either or both of the following monthly meetings:
Safe Strawberry Monterey Bay Working Group—Salinas Branch
Thursday, January 21, 2016 (and every 3rd Thursday of the month)
6:30 – 8:00 PM (Food provided!)
Monterey Bay Central Labor Council
931 E Market Street, Salinas
Safe Strawberry Monterey Bay Working Group—Watsonville Branch
Thursday, January 28, 2016 (and every 4th Thursday of the month)
5:30 – 7:00 PM (Food provided!)
Pajaro Valley Federation of Teachers
734 E Lake Avenue #15, Watsonville
For more on the issue, see Mary Flodin’s blog: http://Fruitof the Devil.net