Local advocacy groups call for further pesticide restrictions in honor of Cesar Chavez Day

Lucila Hernandez was pregnant when a crop duster sprayed her and more than 30 other farmworkers with pesticides in the ’90s. Her son, she said, was born ill.

“We spent a long time in the hospital, he and I, recovering,” Hernandez, a former Guadalupe farmworker, said through tears at a pesticide reform press conference in Minami Park on March 30. “My friend who was also in that group, her baby died.”

Community members like Hernandez were the subject of the event, which acted as both a celebration of Cesar Chavez, a civil rights activist who co-founded the United Farm Workers union, and a call for local pesticide protections in Santa Barbara County, where schools often neighbor crops.

click to enlarge Local advocacy groups call for further pesticide restrictions in honor of Cesar Chavez Day
PHOTO BY KASEY BUBNASH
SI SE PUEDE: Jorge Manly-Gil of the Guadalupe Catholic Worker, who spoke at a pesticide reform news conference on March 30, called on the Santa Barbara County Agricultural Commissioner’s Office to impose a countywide ban on chlorpyrifos use. “How many lives have to be lost or impacted?” he asked at the event.

Chavez long protested organophosphate insecticides like chlorpyrifos, a widely used pesticide proven to cause lasting health effects and developmental disorders in children, according to Eriberto Fernandez of the United Farm Workers Foundation. Fernandez told attendees that Chavez once fasted for 36 days in 1988 in protest of pesticides like chlorpyrifos.

“Yet here were are,” Fernandez said at the event, “almost 30 years after that date, still continuing to sound the alarm on behalf of farmworkers and their children.”

Although chlorpyrifos was banned from household use in 2000, it is still widely used on California crops today. On March 29, 2017, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Secretary Scott Pruitt rejected a proposed nationwide ban on chlorpyrifos. The decision followed an EPA health risk assessment of chlorpyrifos published in 2016, which concluded that exposure to chlorpyrifos could potentially cause serious, lasting health issues.

The California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment responded to the decision in December 2017 by listing chlorpyrifos as a Proposition 65 Developmental and Reproductive Toxicant.

“This poisonous chemical is in the air that we breathe, the food that we eat, and the soil in which our children play,” Fernandez said.

Jesus Herrera, a representative of Planned Parenthood of California Central Coast, said at the event that excessive exposure to pesticides can disrupt hormones and increase the risk of birth defects and learning disabilities in children.

Joana Barrera, a community organizer with Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE), said she recently attended a local farmworker’s medical appointment to provide translation services. At the appointment, she said, it became clear that the resident’s increasingly painful respiratory issues had been caused by inhaling pesticides while picking strawberries.

The pesticide is hurting community members, Barrera said.

Although the California EPA is investigating chlorpyrifos and its potentially harmful effects, that process could last until December or longer. Santa Barbara County residents want immediate action, according to Adam Vega, a community organizer with CAUSE.

Vega said a Department of Public Health study on pesticide use near schools in California, published in 2014, placed five Santa Barbara County schools in the top 100 for most nearby chlorpyrifos use. Kermit McKenzie Junior High School was 16th on the list.

Although the California Department of Pesticide Regulation further restricted pesticide use on crops within a quarter mile of schools in January, Vega said it’s not enough. In a recent incident in Kern County, he said farmworkers were hit by pesticides that drifted from more than 3 miles away.

Vega said the Santa Barbara County Agricultural Commissioner’s Office should simply place a countywide ban on the chlorpyrifos use.

“So rather than play with the buffer zone and get into a fight where everyone loses, we can move away from [chlorpyrifos] use,” Vega said in an interview with the Sun. “Anything that’s grown with chlorpyrifos can be grown organically, and we know that. We’d like to see more biologically based methods of pest management.” 

Staff Writer Kasey Bubnash writes School Scene each week. Information can be sent to the Sun via mail, fax, or email at [email protected].

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