Nearby Crop Spraying Troubles Oxnard Teachers

Teacher John Cort has tended the same playing field at a local 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 noxious fumigants, toxic 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 the 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 only reinforce their concerns.

A month ago, Cort hustled his Rio Del Valle Junior High class inside the cafeteria because a farmer sprayed too close to the school. “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, said she battled pneumonia for two weeks after a spraying incident--the third extended absence she blames on pesticides.

And in November, a teacher at nearby Rio Mesa High School said two pesticide sprayings in three days nearly crippled her by causing a muscle disorder.

“It felt like I had a blowtorch burning inside my chest,” said special education teacher Janet Lapins. “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 such as bans on school-time spraying close to campuses usually protect teachers and students. Only three incidents of suspected school-time spraying have been reported in the last four years, they say. What’s more, they say they receive few teacher complaints.

“The health and safety of our teachers and students is foremost on our minds,” said Assistant Rio 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 charged with monitoring pesticide use and reporting overexposure 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 did file complaints about two incidents.

Tests confirmed significant pesticide drift onto the campus in one early-morning spraying, where 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 reports filed with county officials. 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 after application of the powerful fumigant methyl bromide to a strawberry field.

Community Interests Are at Loggerheads

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 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 also pump $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 to hands and legs--that they think were 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 problems of the past led to today’s 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, an environmental watchdog organization, 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.

Doug Wagner, who farms 100 acres of strawberries near Rio Mesa High, 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.”

Assistant Rio 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.

Cloud of Suspicion Remains for Many

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 happens sometimes.

Cort said he can’t prove it, but believes he needed eight throat operations not only because he strains his voice as a coach, but because of persistent pesticide irritation.

Although 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.

Rosanna Padilla, 29, said she has had several bouts of pesticide illness.

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

“I always end up with severe asthma whenever they spray,” said Fuller, in her ninth year at Rio Del Valle. “Three different times I’ve ended up with pneumonia within two days.”

Former Rio Del Valle teacher Cynthia Medina said she too suffered from persistent headaches, sore throat and painful sinuses during her three years at the junior high.

“Since I left I haven’t had those problems at all,” said Medina, now principal at Piru Elementary, about 30 miles away.

Evidence Lacking Among Students

Cort, Fuller and others said they believe that 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 Fuller sees, said he probably has 40 other patients who also believe 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. “And the question is, ‘Was it the spraying, or was it natural pollen or mold spores?’ ”

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 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. And just because these children do not end up in the emergency room doesn’t mean the exposure isn’t occurring.”