Poisons on the Wind Drift Catching in Washington State

“Please, don’t use my name,” the woman pleaded. She was hesitant to speak with representatives of Washington State’s Farm Worker Pesticide Project (FWPP) and only agreed to tell her story if she could use a pseudonym, “Anita.” Meeting with activists at a public park in Yakima, Anita described the day in 2004 when she was working in an apple orchard. A tractor rolled by about 50 feet away, spraying a cloud of pesticide. Within minutes her face and arms erupted in a red rash, her head began to throb and she began to vomit.

Such stories are far too common in Washington’s apple, pear and cherry orchards where rows of trees are routinely doused with organophosphate (OP) and carbamate insecticides. In 2005, Washington’s orchards were treated with 226,400 pounds of the OP chlorpyrifos. Despite the fact that 58% of the state’s apple trees are treated with these pesticides, state and federal agencies do not require growers to report pesticide use or provide warning notifications prior to use.

“My children are breathing poisons and something’s got to be done to stop this,” says FWPP Community Organizer Manuel Perez. “We have a right to breathe clean air.” Perez and his family live near orchards where pesticides are applied. Like most Yakima residents, the Perez family only had suspicions that they were being poisoned. Now they have facts.

“Washington Department of Agriculture officials dismissed community concerns about air quality without making any effort to find out what people are actually breathing,” says FWPP Executive Director Carol Dansereau, “So people were forced to test the air themselves.”

In the spring of 2006, with the assistance of FWPP and Pesticide Action Network, farmworker families in two Yakima Valley locations tested the air with “Drift Catchers”—inexpensive, air-monitors designed by PAN chemist Dr. Susan Kegley. The air samples captured by these farm families tested positive for chlorpyifos—the key ingredient in Lorsban, an insecticide widely used in local orchards. The results were published in a December 2006 joint FWPP–PAN report, Poisons on the Wind: Community Air Monitoring for Chlorpyrifos in Yakima Valley. (An executive summary is available in Spanish.)

Chlorpyrifos is an organophosphate that has recently been linked to developmental disorders and ADHD in children. The compound has also been linked to asthma, as well as lung cancer in farmers. Although banned for residential application in 2000, its use is still permitted in agriculture.

Exposure to carbamate and organophosphate pesticides like chlorpyrifos is known to inhibit the activity of cholinesterase, an important nervous system enzyme. At least one in ten Washington State farmworkers have registered cholinesterase drops of more than 20% following exposure to chlorpyrifos. About 2% of the tested workers showed even more severe declines. California also has a program for monitoring farmworkers’ cholinesterase but only Washington has informed the public of the results. (Because cholinesterase activity varies naturally, the 20% number provides a threshold for noticing decreases compared to normal.)

At lower exposure levels, people may experience nausea, dizziness, mental confusion, headaches, and breathing problems. Higher exposures can lead to convulsions, respiratory distress and death. Fetal exposures can damage the nervous system, resulting in developmental problems. The monitoring in Washington State showed that there are many days during the chlorpyrifos spray season when the air is simply not safe to breathe.

In the town of Cowiche, a Drift Catching project was carried out by a former farmworker in the backyard of a home he shares with his wife and three children (ages 3, 8 and 12). An apple orchard is located 57 feet from where the Drift Catcher was set up. Chlorpyrifos was detected on each of the 21 days sampled.

Tests in PAN’s laboratory established that airborne pesticide levels exceeded the U.S. EPA’s “acceptable” dose for one-year-olds on 38% of the days sampled. The highest concentration measured for a single 24-hour period was 3.4 times the acute Reference Exposure Level (REL) for a child. Exposures would have been even higher had it not been for the fact that prevailing winds tended to blow the drift away from the house.

In the nearby town of Tieton, air monitoring was undertaken at a home shared by three children and their pregnant mother. Orchards surround their home, the nearest trees standing less than 46 feet from their house. Again, chlorpyrifos was detected on each sampling day. And again, levels exceeded the acute and sub-chronic RELs for children 38% of the time. PAN’s laboratory analyses were verified by an independent commercial laboratory.

The REL represents the concentration below which no adverse health effects are expected to occur. But the “acceptable” dose of chlorpyrifos is based on only one measure of the chemical’s ability to cause damage—cholinesterase inhibition. Recent research suggests that chlorpyrifos and other organophosphates can also be a danger to developing babies through different mechanisms of toxicity as well.

Homes, daycare centers, schools, and workplaces are often as close or closer to orchards than these test sites. This suggests that large numbers of people may be unsuspectingly inhaling chlorpyrifos. Between 2000 and 2004, Washington State’s Department of Health recorded 172 incidents in which people were stricken with pesticide poisoning. Surprisingly, only 47% (81) were agricultural workers; 53% (91) of those affected were people exposed in their homes, in public parks or simply driving down country roads.

Under state law it is illegal for anyone to handle agricultural pesticides in a manner that allows the pesticide to expose others through drift. Our air monitoring results indicate that this requirement is being violated on a potentially massive scale and neither the Washington State Department of Agriculture nor the EPA is taking the necessary steps to protect the public. The Drift Catcher results exposed the problem of “post-application drift,” which can pose a health risk days after the actual application. Although significant levels of pesticides can be released as they slowly “volatize” off soil and crop surfaces, the EPA does not recognize this as a problem for regulatory concern.

FWPP has long called for effective policies to address the drift issue, such as:

• Create no-spray buffer zones around unprotected workers, homes and schools,
• Prohibit applications when wind speeds exceed five mph and gusts exceed ten mph,
• Discourage the use of drift-prone technologies such as air-blast sprayers,
• Establish timelines to phase out the most dangerous pesticides and,
• Assist growers who wish to shift to safer alternatives.

Farmworker communities and public interest groups have helped shine a light on a matter that has been kept in the dark for too long. In the absence of government testing, our Washington State findings have documented what was long suspected—the air around many of Washington’s fields and orchards is not safe to breathe.

FWPP has called upon Washington Governor Christine Gregoire to direct the Departments of Agriculture, Ecology, Health, and Labor & Industries to establish acomprehensive and effective air monitoring program.

HB 1810, introduced on February 6, would require the state to “monitor pesticide drift and its impacts.” Air testing for chlorpyrifos and other chemical agents would be done during times of high pesticide use. The Department of Health would analyze the test results.

In addition, we have asked that Washington State University’s Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources launch an Alternatives Assessment with state funding.

“You can grow food without pesticides,” says Adolfo Alvarez, an organic orchard owner and an FWPP board member. “Before I got my own orchards, I was exposed to pesticides as a farmworker and it made me sick,” he explains. “I want to protect my workers, their children and neighbors, so I use alternatives.”

We cannot allow these exposures to continue, not only because of what we know today about the health impacts, but also because of what we don’t yet know.