Warning by Farmers Urged Before Pesticide Use

A farm worker advocacy group sent letters Friday to about 70 local strawberry growers, asking them to voluntarily notify residents who live near their fields 21 days before they inject the potent fumigant methyl bromide to sterilize the soil.

“The growers should want to comply to be good neighbors,” said Eileen McCarthy, attorney for California Rural Legal Assistance in Oxnard. “As long as methyl bromide is going to be used, people who could be affected should receive advance notice so they can leave the area when it’s sprayed.”

Methyl bromide is a highly volatile pesticide, most commonly used locally on about 4,500 acres of strawberries. It is injected 18 inches into the soil, then covered with a plastic tarp for at least five days to contain the chemical’s toxic fumes.

The mailing follows by a day an announcement by state pesticide regulators that they are investigating claims by several east Ventura residents that they were sickened last week by pesticide vapors drifting from a strawberry field that backs up to their homes.

Nonetheless, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Pesticide Regulation said that warning letters such as those suggested by the advocacy group are ill advised.

“I think it just worries people unnecessarily,” spokeswoman Veda Federighi said.

State-mandated buffer zones between fumigated fields and houses, schools and workplaces generally are effective in protecting neighbors from methyl bromide fumes, she said.

W. Earl McPhail, the agricultural commissioner for Ventura County, also said farmers’ use of methyl bromide is well-controlled, and fields are posted when methyl bromide is used.

“Public relations-wise it might be a good idea,” McPhail said of neighbor notification. “But my concern is whether we’re trying to solve an imaginary problem.” Many of the estimated 150 local strawberry growers already voluntarily notify their neighbors, he said.

The advocacy group’s letter, similar to one mailed recently to 375 growers in Santa Cruz and Monterey counties, notes that public notice is mandatory when methyl bromide is used in nonagricultural activities, such as fumigation of houses.

And it argues that since the pesticide is on a state list of chemicals known to cause reproductive harm, neighbors should be warned.

McCarthy said that the cost to notify neighbors within a one-mile radius would be minimal if the flier was copied and hand-delivered, and that a mass mailing would cost between $250 and $300.

Ventura County strawberry growers responded by saying they are good neighbors but do not eagerly embrace more regulation.

Jon Rippee, field supervisor for Camarillo-based Conroy Farms, said he has periodically notified residents living near his company’s east Oxnard strawberry field because of an incident with methyl bromide in 1992. Several neighbors living on Emerson Avenue then complained about shortness of breath and burning eyes that were caused by chloropicrin, a “warning chemical” applied with the odorless methyl bromide to give it a distinctive smell.

“I went out and gave out my business card and told them that if they had any questions they should call,” he said. “I think with understanding a lot of the fear or the phobia is relieved.”

But Rippee said the proposed 21-day formal notice makes him nervous. “The 21 days would be another regulation,” he said, “another T to cross.”