Pesticide Exposure

* On March 15, 1998, the results of yet another study linking pesticides to children’s health problems were released. This study found that children who reside in urban-farm areas are at the highest risk for suffering permanent brain defects from pesticide exposure. According to the study, “widely used pest-killing chemicals, in amounts routinely found in the environment in farm areas, seem to be capable of skewing thyroid hormones, which control how the brain of a fetus or young child develops.”

Ventura County is an urban-farm area. Its children are the third most exposed to toxic airborne pesticides in California, and California is the largest user of agricultural pesticides in the United States. Air monitoring studies conducted in Ventura have shown that pesticides drift from the site of application into residential neighborhoods, school campuses and day-care centers.

I represent a woman who, in her fifth month of pregnancy, was exposed to a pesticide that had drifted from agricultural lands onto the road where she was driving. The chemical came into her car vents and caused her to experience severe symptoms of acute pesticide poisoning. She contacted the county agricultural commissioner’s office and explained that she was five months pregnant and had been exposed to a pesticide. When she asked them to find out the name of the chemical, they denied that a chemical had been sprayed and stated that the substance was “only water.” Lab tests of samples taken from her car, however, revealed the presence of a highly toxic organophosphate pesticide, chlorpyrifos. The agricultural commissioner’s willingness to provide false information to pesticide victims, coupled with his well-documented failure to enforce existing regulations, potentially yields growers who have no punitive incentive to adhere to buffer zone requirements or forgo spraying in windy conditions. According to state officials, our agricultural commissioner does not report or penalize growers for breaking pesticide regulations. Ventura County deserves better.

My son attends an elementary school located across the street from a large citrus orchard maintained by the same grower who exposed this pregnant woman. I am very concerned. These concerns are valid. Agricultural Commissioner Earl McPhail, however, has consistently dismissed these concerns as emotional and unsubstantiated.

I am aware that an agricultural commissioner enjoys wide latitude in implementing conditions for pesticide applications around sensitive areas such as schools, day-care centers and homes. Mr. McPhail has repeatedly failed to utilize this power to place tenable conditions upon the application of pesticides in these sensitive areas.

With all of the state and county information regarding the failures of our current agricultural commissioner, it is imperative that we appoint a new one. I commend the Board of Supervisors for placing our agricultural commissioner on probation. It would be naive for this county and its legislators to believe that after 20 years of complacency, Mr. McPhail can truly make lasting change. Logic and wisdom tell us that his term is up.

MARY HAFFNER, Esq.

Ventura