PAN Defends St. Augustine, Florida’s Embattled Teen Air Testers

Last December, two students at Florida’s Pedro Menendez High School unveiled a science fair project that unleashed an environmental controversy. Alex Lowe and ReAnna Greene used a PAN Drift Catcher to sample the air at an elementary school located next to a cabbage field. When tests revealed unsafe concentrations of several toxic pesticides at South Woods Elementary, the news hit the front page of the local paper and the simple science project suddenly turned into a major civics lesson.

St. Johns County School District officials initially dismissed the students’ research but, under growing pressure from concerned parents, an outside consulting firm, MACTEC, was hired to re-test the air. When MACTEC’s report came back negative, South Woods Principal Brian McElhone declared the school “a safe learning environment.”

Alex and ReAnna remained skeptical. After all, South Woods Elementary was surrounded on three sides by fields of Chinese cabbage. Pesticide Action Network (which provided the students with the Drift Catcher, trained them to use it, and provided lab analysis of their air samples) was now called on to help defend the young scientists.

PAN’s initial laboratory analyses of the South Woods air samples had detected the presence of the herbicide trifluralin—a possible carcinogen—and the neurotoxic insecticides endosulfan and diazinon. Endosulfan was found in every sample, and diazinon and trifluralin were each detected in all but one sample. On three days, endosulfan concentrations were found to exceed the levels-of-concern for infants, and diazinon concentrations exceeded the infant level-of-concern on five days and the adult level-of-concern on two days.

In a follow-up Technical Report, PAN scientists reviewed both the students’ methodology and MACTEC’s conclusions and noted the following problems with the contractors’ findings:

• MACTEC’s methodology was not sensitive enough to detect the levels of pesticides found in the students’ samples.
• PAN’s air-sampling methodology was almost 1,000 times more sensitive than MACTEC’s.
• While 65 pesticide active ingredients are legally used on cabbage fields, MACTEC only tested for three.
• MACTEC used adult worker exposure standards to assess the potential health risks for children attending the elementary school.

PAN’s Dr. Susan Kegley and the St. Augustine Environmental Youth Council’s Bill Hamilton came to the students’ defense with a guest editorial in the April 8 edition of the St. Augustine Record in which they noted that MACTEC’s tests were “analogous to reengineering a home smoke detector to sound the alarm only when smoke concentrations are ten times higher than levels considered dangerous.”*

“Children are exquisitely sensitive to some pesticides, and damage done early in a child’s life can lead to lifelong disabilities or chronic illness,” Kegley noted. “Worse, EPA has designated no ‘acceptable’ levels for exposure to the chemical mixture found in the science fair project—for either adults or children.”

Pesticide levels can vary widely depending on the kinds of chemicals used, the manner of application, the crops being treated, and local weather conditions. “The students made this point when their science fair results were first released,” Kegley observed. “Their study found very different levels on the eight consecutive days, mirroring results from other studies around the country.”

PAN’s scientists have issued a series of recommendations for the South Woods students and parents, school officials, Florida health officials, state legislators and the U.S. EPA. The recommendations include:

• Provide no-spray “protection zones” between chemically treated fields and nearby residential, public and commercial property.
• Develop and implement a program to help farmers move away from highly toxic pesticides and use less-harmful, non-chemical pest control alternatives.
• Provide notification to neighboring schools and homes when chemical applications are planned and keep children indoors during and after those periods.
• Require routine air sampling at schools located in agricultural areas.

As the Environmental Youth Council’s Bill Hamilton put it: “Children have only one chance to grow up right. Our responsibility is to ensure they get that chance.”