Group Demands Caltrans Abandon Use of Herbicides : Health: The weedkillers are harmful to humans or potentially hazardous, environmentalists say. The agency says the chemicals have been certified as safe by the EPA.

A coalition of environmentalists Friday demanded Caltrans stop using potentially toxic herbicides to kill weeds along roadsides throughout the state.

Calling the transportation agency the “biggest and most indiscriminate user of pesticides” in California, the group said motorists, pedestrians, joggers and bicyclists are exposed to dangerous chemicals, or chemicals whose effects are unknown, each time roadside vegetation is sprayed.

“In the name of cosmetics and convenience, Caltrans perpetuates the circle of poison,” Jim Delso, Los Angeles field manager for Greenpeace, said in reading a statement from his organization.

Joining the group was Assemblyman Tom Hayden, who called for a moratorium on 16 chemicals whose manufacturers, he said, have failed to supply complete health-risk studies.

Legislation pending in Sacramento, Hayden said, would close an “outrageous loophole” by giving manufacturers a deadline by which they must supply studies of the health risks posed by the chemicals they produce. State law already requires them to do so, but many companies have not obeyed, Hayden said.

Caltrans officials, for their part, said the chemicals used in “vegetation control” along state roadways have been certified as safe by the Environmental Protection Agency. Caltrans sprays herbicides in nearly 80% of its weed eradication and 10% of tree and shrubbery control, said Ralph Carhart, landscape architect for the agency’s maintenance division.

Prompted by a 1988 lawsuit aimed at banning Caltrans’ use of herbicides in Marin County, the transportation agency recently issued a draft environmental impact report that examines alternative ways to control weeds. Public workshops begin next week.

The environmentalists labeled the $635,000 report a “whitewash” that “restates the status quo.”

They called on Caltrans to consider more mowing, the planting of low-growth vegetation, and burning and steaming the plants to get rid of them.

The demands from the coalition come in the wake of heated controversy over the spill of a toxic weedkiller in the Sacramento River by a derailed Southern Pacific car. The chemical, metam-sodium, is not among those used by Caltrans, Carhart said.

But, said Joan Clayburgh, field director for Pesticide Watch, “California motorists don’t have to wait for a spill to occur to be exposed to hazardous materials because Caltrans itself is filling our transportation corridors with toxic chemicals.”

In Los Angeles and Ventura counties, which make up one of Caltrans’ 11 districts, the agency treats 5,000 acres of vegetation along 597 miles of freeway, said Stan Lisiewicz, deputy director for construction and maintenance.

Plants and weeds near highways are kept under control to protect the pavement, inhibit the spread of fire, preserve visibility and for aesthetic purposes.

Clayburgh said that Caltrans has gone overboard in its use of chemicals. Her group has documented a number of cases of people reporting rashes, respiratory conditions or other ailments purportedly caused by pesticides, she said.