Hazardous Pesticides

* In your July 21 article, “Bringing Farms Back to Nature,” the North Dakota farmer’s move to end the use of hazardous pesticides in his farming sends a clarion call to all Californians. Sustainable agriculture is not only economically viable, it means safer food, cleaner air and healthier families.

California leads the country in its pesticide use with over 200 million pounds used annually. Pesticide use not only finds its way onto our food, but it is poisoning the air, water and land of those who live next to fields because pesticides are drifting from farmlands. Consequently, neighbors of agriculture are suffering from respiratory problems and flu-like symptoms. Along with the short-term effects of pesticide exposure come the fears of cancer, birth defects and infertility.

To protect the heath and environment of families and workers, the state must ban the practice of aerial applications of pesticides and create large, pesticide-free buffer zones between homes and fields. And most important, the state must reduce overall pesticide use and ban the worst.

JEANNE MERRILL

Field Director

Pesticide Watch Education Fund

San Francisco

* I had thought that by now your letters column would be filled with angry protests regarding the dumping of toxic waste on agricultural lands (July 7).

While apparently not illegal, this dumping violates practically everything we’ve learned in the last 50 years about preserving the health of our planet. What is the real reason it is being done? The only answer I can think of is that this arrant, willful abuse of Mother Earth satisfies some malevolent psychological impulse.

WILLIAM McCALL

Arcadia