Project Update - Pesticides Community Outreach Program

Wishtoyo's White Paper, "Agritoxins: Ventura County's Toxic Time Bomb" was released in 2003.  The study of health effects of agricultural pesticide use in Ventura County resulted in recommendations to reduce hazards affecting Ventura County. These include bilingual community education; stricter safety regulations for aerial applications; development of resources to direct the needs and concerns of the community regarding agricultural pesticide use; advocacy for adoption of IPM policy in Ventura and other cities in Ventura County; and, promotion of less toxic farming methods.
Click Here to view a pdf file of the Agritoxins White Paper.  (Please note: It will take a moment for it to load.)

Updated May 2007
Volatile Organic Compounds Lawsuit VICTORY   
A lawsuit brought by a coalition of community-based environmental justice groups, including Wishtoyo Foundation / Ventura Coastkeeper, will provide relief for smog-plagued California.  After two years of resistance by senior environmental officials in the Schwarzenegger Administration, a Federal judge ordered California to reduce smog-forming emissions from pesticides. 

Pesticides rank among the largest contributors to California’s notorious smoggy air quality.  In Ventura County, pesticides are the third largest source of smog-forming volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions.  In the San Joaquin Valley, residents are exposed to the most number of unhealthy days of pollution in the United States, and pesticides rank as the fourth largest source of smog pollution. 

“Despite smog-forming emissions actually increasing over time, the Schwarzenegger Administration chose to protect pesticide users and manufacturers rather than public health.” said Mati Waiya, Executive Director of the Wishtoyo Foundation and the Ventura Coastkeeper.  “In Ventura, smog-forming emissions from pesticides have doubled, with most of those emissions coming from fumigants.” 

In 1994, California regulators promised to reduce smog-forming emissions from pesticides by 20% from 1990 levels by the year 2005.  In February 2006, a Federal judge ruled that California violated that promise in 1997 when the state used inappropriate data to avoid adopting regulations necessary to achieve the 20% reduction.

“The order gives the state and pesticide users ample time to adjust practices and develop reasonable regulatory controls,” said Mary Haffner, Board Member of Community and Children’s Advocates Against Pesticide Poisonin “The rg.  egulators need to call off their lawyers, stop fighting us, and start protecting the public.” The Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment (CRPE) represents the community groups. 

Update July 2007

Local farmers continue to challenge the newly guaranteed restrictions of the use of methyl bromide, a strawberry field fumigant. A federal judge upheld the ruling to cease the use of methyl bromide by January 2008; however, farmers are complaining now that they were not included in the decision, claiming excessive hardships will be incurred with millions of dollars of lost revenue.

Toxic Air Contaminants Lawsuit 
Wishtoyo Foundation / Ventura Coastkeeper joined with several community groups statewide in a lawsuit filed in Sacramento court, on January 20th, 2005, stating the state's failure to implement the Toxic Air Contaminants laws which mandated, in 1984, that dangerous chemicals be tested under specific guidelines. Of the 900 chemicals now in use, only four have been tested under those rules. A news conference was held Jan. 19th in Oxnard to announce our participation in this lawsuit, and was covered by the L.A. Times, the Ventura County Star and KCLU radio.

Toxic chemicals continue to drift far from the sites of the aerial applications, sickening residents near farming areas statewide.  The groups involved in the lawsuit, which are being represented by The Center for Race, Poverty and the Environment, are: Californians for Pesticide Reform (CPR - S.F.), the Association of Irritated Residents (AIR), Community and Children's Advocates Against Pesticide Poisoning.

Communities at Risk
Great danger continues to exist in areas adjacent to farmlands, where aerial applications of pesticides are routinely applied. Various types of weather cause the chemicals to either be suspended in the air and carried to neighboring areas - as in fog, to windy weather which blows it into communities mile away. Agricultural runoff can carry the chemicals into our waterways. (Wishtoyo continues to be involved in Ag Waivers, which exempted agriculture entirely from Clean Water Act laws; farms have been allowed to discharge un-filtered, un-regulated runoff into public waters for decades.)

Symptoms from toxic exposure can range from acute to minor, and usually resemble flu-like symptoms such as cough, headache, fatigue, dizziness and nausea.