Teachers Protest Use of Pesticides Near Schools

Teacher John Cort has tended the same playing field at an El Rio junior high since Nixon was president.

Early on, he hardly noticed when pesticide crews sprayed lemon orchards once or twice a year.

But now, with tractor rigs or crop-duster copters strafing nearby strawberry fields every couple of weeks, Cort and his physical education students sometimes flee indoors to escape the possible drift of toxic fumigants, noxious fungicides and poisonous insecticides.

“They’re supposed to check the wind before they spray, but they don’t always do it,” Cort said. “I’ve been told by my doctor that we’re basically a data group for the next generation to study. This is one of those iceberg issues where someone five years from now will say, ‘Wow, what happened here?’ ”

After years of silence, teachers in the Rio School District are publicly protesting what they see as pesticide poisoning because of recent statements by their superintendent that heavy spraying near campus is not a health problem.

“It is a big safety problem,” said Rebecca Barbetti, Cort’s wife and president of the Rio Teachers Assn. “But the district administration refuses to recognize that it exists.”

Indeed, teachers in school districts ringing the rich farm plain that separates Oxnard from Camarillo say that new studies showing heavy use of pest killers near schools reinforce their concerns.

A month ago, Cort hustled his Rio Del Valle Junior High class inside the cafeteria because a farmer had sprayed too close. “In the last two years, we’ve had five or six times where we’ve had to evacuate the whole playing field,” he said.

In January, a Rio Del Valle music teacher who blames her chronic asthma on pesticides, says she battled pneumonia for two weeks after spraying--the third extended absence she blames on pesticides.

And last November, a teacher at nearby Rio Mesa High School said that two sprayings in three days nearly crippled her.

“It felt like I had a blowtorch burning inside my chest,” special education teacher Janet Lapins said. “We have lots of these problems. But there’s lots of denial. You have a tendency to say pesticides are OK, that they won’t hurt you, because that’s what we’re told.”

Rio School District officials say there is no cause for alarm, because safeguards protect teachers and students. And they say they receive few teacher complaints.

“The health and safety of our teachers and students is foremost on our minds,” said Rio Assistant Supt. Mary Anne McCabe. “If I had a number of incidents crossing my desk, I’d see a problem. But I’m not seeing it now.”

Teachers say health problems often go unreported because nothing much comes of complaints.

The two recent Rio Del Valle incidents were reported to the Rio School District, but not to county officials, who are charged with monitoring pesticide use and with reporting excessive exposure to state authorities.

Lapins’ complaint in November is the only school-related incident on file at the county agricultural commissioner’s office for the last 18 months.

In 1996, about three dozen teachers at the California Youth Authority’s Ventura School filed complaints about two separate incidents.

Tests confirmed significant pesticide drift onto campus in one early morning spraying, after which six teachers went home ill and a farmer was cited for a safety violation.

In the second incident, 28 Ventura School teachers went home, including 22 who sought medical attention and two who were briefly hospitalized, according to incident reports. Evidence of pesticide drift was inconclusive.

Operators of an east Ventura child-care center also evacuated a dozen youngsters in 1996 after residents complained of flu-like symptoms following application of the fumigant methyl bromide to an abutting strawberry field.

Balancing Farming and Development

Such conflicts mirror the push and pull between farm interests and urban development, and are part of an intense ongoing debate about how Ventura County can save its vibrant farm industry while also protecting its residents.

Countywide, pesticide use on crops has risen about 13% in recent years despite the annual loss of hundreds of acres of farmland to development.

“There have been some problems,” said David Buettner, the county’s chief deputy agricultural commissioner. “It’s not just for the school districts. We tend to have complaints from new residential areas where people move in who have not had experience with agriculture. They complain of pesticides, dirt, dust, noises and odors.”

Buettner and school administrators generally agree that farmers are careful about when and how they coax bountiful harvests from the fertile Oxnard Plain--a hothouse for crops that absorb large doses of pesticides, but one that also pumps $1.2 billion a year into the local economy.

Despite assurances that pesticide spraying is safe, teachers say they sometimes suffer headaches, nausea, dizziness, skin rashes, watery eyes, runny noses and breathing problems--even tremors in the hands and legs--that they think are related to pesticide sprays.

Flu-like symptoms are a classic sign of pesticide poisoning, experts say.

But no one can say for sure how much of a risk pesticides pose to schools because definitive studies do not exist on links between agricultural spraying and illness on campus, doctors, academics and activists said.

Studies in other states have shown that people who live in areas where pesticides are used heavily have elevated rates of cancer and birth defects. But no California study has established such a connection despite lengthy investigations into cancer clusters in two San Joaquin Valley towns.

Rio district officials say the problems of the past led to the current safeguards.

After a spraying incident at Rio del Valle six years ago, Rio administrators forged agreements with farmers, who vowed to warn before spraying near the junior high, to spray only when students are not present, and to check wind direction before spraying.

“I don’t think there’s a problem,” Supt. Yolanda Benitez said last month, after a study by the Washington-based Environmental Working Group found that four Rio schools were among the closest in the state to heavy use of the nerve gas methyl bromide and the tear gas chloropicrin.

Assistant Supt. McCabe said the district has received only three teacher complaints in four years about pesticide-related illness.

Perhaps teachers need to be reminded to formally respond when they become ill, she said.

Going Home From School Feeling Sick

Leaders of the Rio district’s 132-teacher union acknowledge that there are fewer pesticide problems than a few years ago, but say school-time spraying still sometimes occurs.

Union leader Barbetti cites, as an extreme example, a 1992 incident at Rio Del Valle where several teachers and students became sick after a helicopter sprayed a strawberry field and the pesticide drifted onto campus.

Cort, 50, said he was one of three teachers who left school to see doctors.

“First, I tasted its bitter taste, then I started to get a headache and my throat started to burn,” he recalled. “Then my eyes turned red and watery and they swelled shut. Later, I became dizzy and kind of disoriented.”

While most Rio Del Valle teachers never complain to superiors about pesticides, several said in interviews that they are sensitive to the chemicals.

Yvonne Railey, 52, a physical education teacher, said her allergies regularly flare up after spraying.

“It’s very irritating,” she said. “I get a headache and a soreness and dryness of the throat. And I get kind of a numbness of the tongue. It’s weird--I’ll feel it, then start looking around for the helicopter.”

Rosanna Padilla, 29, said she has had several bouts of pesticide illness at two Rio district schools.

“When I was still at Rio Plaza [Elementary], I would have these attacks,” she said. “I remember one in the classroom. I turned just beet red and then white as a ghost. I stopped talking and my fifth-graders looked at me. I broke out in hives and had really severe stomach cramps.”

Three Rio Del Valle teachers have developed asthma since arriving there, said music instructor Jarrell Fuller, 50.

“Three different times I’ve ended up with pneumonia within two days of spraying,” said Fuller, who is in her ninth year at Rio Del Valle.

Mixed Feelings About Danger of Chemicals

Cort, Fuller and others said they think students at Rio Del Valle also suffer from high levels of asthma. But McCabe said a study of the district’s five schools found about 5% of students had histories of asthma: The highest rates were 6% at Rio Del Valle and 8% at Rio Lindo Elementary.

Such rates are not high compared to the population overall, doctors said.

Peter Aline, the Oxnard physician who Fuller sees, said he probably has 40 other patients who also think their asthma is caused by pesticides--but that is not necessarily so.

“These patients already have an underlying asthma, so what they’re talking about is a worsening of the symptoms,” he said.

Even experts keenly alert to the perils of pesticides say the chemicals have not been conclusively linked to asthma.

Marion Moses, a physician and activist with the nonprofit Pesticide Education Center in San Francisco, said she personally saw such problems in children of farm workers.

“Almost any pesticide can trigger it,” she said. “But here’s the thing--there’s really not much in the literature about these problems.

“What people really need to understand,” she added, “ is that they’re using a lot of very bad chemicals that pose a risk to children.”

Lapins, the Rio Mesa teacher, is sure her health problems are caused by the stream of pesticides sprayed on nearby strawberries--the crop most heavily treated in California. About one-fifth of the 5.84 million pounds of pesticides used in Ventura County in 1995 were applied to strawberry fields, which represent about one-twentyfifth of cultivated acreage.

“When I came to Oxnard, I was the epitome of health,” she said. “If you had looked up the word ‘superwoman’ in the dictionary, you would have seen Janet Lapins’ picture next to it. And now I’m so crippled from a muscle disorder that they cannot find the source.”

When school is out, her health returns, she said. When the spraying starts in fields adjacent to Rio Mesa in the fall, she said, her muscles collapse again.

She felt particularly good last fall until two sprayings in rapid succession. But investigators found no evidence of pesticide drift onto campus.

Rio Mesa High nurse Diane Garcia said teachers complain of headaches and nausea on the days when strawberries are sprayed.

“There are times when we’ve been real suspicious about breezes bringing pesticides onto campus,” she said. “But I haven’t seen an increase in traffic in my office during those times.”

About 200 of the 2,300 students at Rio Mesa have a history of asthma, but that figure is about the same as at the other four high schools in the Oxnard Union High School District, she said.

Doug Wagner, who farms 100 acres of strawberries near Rio Mesa, said he has never received a complaint. “I don’t understand what the concerns are,” he said. “I do my spraying at night, usually, and then if there is any prevailing wind toward the school, we don’t do any application until the weather conditions are right.”

Working to Ensure Community’s Safety

Just a couple of miles away from Rio Mesa, across fields of celery, broccoli, citrus and strawberries, teachers at the state Youth Authority’s Ventura School have fought a decade-long battle to ensure their safety from pesticides.

Through a 1988 lawsuit, Ventura School employees gained assurances from farmers and pesticide sprayers that they would be more careful. But by 1996, rules banning school-time spraying and requiring warnings before spraying were being ignored, teachers said.

So, when they were sickened by early morning sprayings in June and October of that year, they walked out en masse. Nearly a dozen left in June, and 28 left in October.

“We’re not anti-agricultural,” said teacher Brad Gardner, who reported illness from both incidents. “But there’s a long history of the growers doing some horrible stuff with pesticides. They came out and sprayed without telling us, and they were right on top of our classrooms.”

The incidents led to reform. Teachers say things have been much better for 18 months.

“We all agreed that if they were going to spray the area, they would give us advance notice, and we would clear out the school area,” said Chuck Kubasek, assistant superintendent.

Some school administrators say, in fact, that neighboring farmers could hardly be more considerate. For example, Mesa Elementary in Somis ranked first of all the schools in California for exposure to heavy doses of pesticides in 1995, the most recent year for which data are available.

“The gentleman who manages the ranches around our school contacts us every time he sprays,” Principal Aldo Calcagno said. “And he sprays on weekends and during breaks, so we don’t see him.”

Although nearly 148,000 pounds of pesticides were used on fields within 1 1/2 miles of Mesa, 85% of that was oil-based spray that suffocates pests but hardly drifts at all.

“We’ve had a great relationship with the school,” grower John Grether said. “My kids have gone there, and I don’t recall any time there has been a problem.”