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Every year, U.S. farmers use about a billion<\/a> pounds of chemicals on crops, including the fruits, nuts, and vegetables many parents beg their kids to eat. <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n The Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration are charged with ensuring that these chemicals don\u2019t endanger consumers, and both agencies test the food supply for pesticide residues each year.<\/p>\n They focus on foods eaten by babies and children, whose developing bodies are particularly sensitive<\/a> to toxic chemicals and typically report that pesticide residues in these products rarely exceed safety standards.<\/p>\n Yet the agencies\u2019 pesticide monitoring approach suffers from several limitations that make it <\/b>difficult<\/b><\/a> to draw meaningful conclusions about pesticide risks to the nation\u2019s food supply, experts say.<\/b><\/p>\n What\u2019s more, government agencies don\u2019t monitor risks to farmworkers<\/i> who labor among those chemicals, or to pregnant women and children<\/i> who live near agricultural fields.<\/p>\n Since pesticide monitoring began about three decades ago, scientists have learned<\/a> that even low doses of pesticides and other synthetic chemicals can harm children<\/b> and that exposure<\/a> to chemical mixtures, particularly during critical windows of neurodevelopment, may carry<\/a> serious health risks that take years to emerge.<\/p>\n And though crops are often sprayed with multiple chemicals over the growing season, both agencies track pesticide residues one chemical at a time<\/b>, to determine whether a specific chemical exceeds safety standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why, several years ago, scientists at the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group, started doing their own analysis of pesticides on produce. The group relies largely on data from the USDA, which tests more produce than the FDA.<\/p>\n About 70% of U.S. produce harbors traces of pesticides<\/b>, the EWG reports in its latest shoppers\u2019 guide to the \u201cDirty Dozen<\/a>\u201d \u2014 those fruits<\/a> and vegetables with the highest pesticide load.<\/p>\n Strawberries topped the list<\/b> for the fourth year in a row, with an average of nearly eight pesticides per sample, followed by spinach<\/b> and kale<\/b>. Spinach had more pesticides by weight than any other crop.<\/p>\n Olga Naidenko, EWG\u2019s senior science adviser for children\u2019s environmental health, says she was surprised to see kale contaminated with a chemical called dacthal, which the EPA classifies<\/a> as a possible human carcinogen, and European regulators banned in 2009. Among the more troubling pesticides found on spinach is permethrin, a neurotoxic insecticide that\u2019s been linked<\/a> to ADHD.<\/p>\n Naidenko says the list is not meant to dissuade people from eating fruits and vegetables, but rather \u201cto call attention to the fact that there are some pretty bad pesticides out there.\u201d<\/p>\n Although the EPA sets thresholds for what it says are acceptable rates of exposure, those bad pesticides have been tied to a long list of adverse health effects, especially among the most vulnerable populations. And the people who bear the highest risks from exposure to these toxic chemicals live and work in the farming communities that feed the nation<\/b>.<\/p>\n More than 90% of Americans have pesticides or their byproducts in their bodies<\/b>, mostly from eating conventionally grown fruits and vegetables. Health experts worry that EPA\u2019s pesticide residue safety levels are too high to protect young children.<\/p>\n Leo Trasande, director of environmental pediatrics at New York University\u2019s Langone Health and author of the new book Sicker, Fatter, Poorer<\/i>, says many of these pesticides act at extremely low levels that mimic our body\u2019s response to our own hormones. \u201cThese synthetic chemicals were not designed with hormonal biology in mind.\u201d<\/p>\n Scientists now know that doses of pesticides once considered safe can harm developing bodies and brains<\/b>. But regulations have failed to keep up.<\/p>\n \u201cWe look at how EPA has been approving pesticides and setting those tolerances and find again and again that the agency\u2019s not taking into account children\u2019s heightened susceptibility to pesticides,\u201d says EWG\u2019s Naidenko.<\/p>\n The most egregious example is chlorpyrifos<\/b>, which the EPA phased out for home use in 2000, citing<\/a> health and environmental concerns.<\/p>\n As evidence of chlorpyrifos\u2019 growing list of diverse health effects mounted<\/a> in scientific journals, the agency proposed<\/a> prohibiting all uses of the chemical in 2015 under the Obama administration. But two years later, Trump\u2019s EPA rescinded that rule, calling chlorpyrifos \u201ccrucial<\/a> to U.S. agriculture,\u201d and citing a return to \u201csound science in decision-making.\u201d<\/p>\n Regulators also fail to account for risks associated with the scores of pesticides that don\u2019t stay where they\u2019re sprayed, creating a toxic environment for farmworkers and their families. It\u2019s clear that workers have higher exposure, Trasande says, \u201cand kids of workers can be exquisitely vulnerable.\u201d<\/p>\n Pesticide residues can follow workers home from the fields on clothing and shoes, then collect in the dust on floors where babies and toddlers play.<\/p>\n Several studies show that children of farmworkers routinely endure<\/a> higher pesticide exposures than consumers and that mothers living close to fields treated with pesticides, including those on the Dirty Dozen list, are more likely<\/a> to have premature babies and children with <\/b>autism<\/b><\/a>, <\/b>impaired<\/b><\/a> cognitive function, and other neurodevelopmental <\/b>disorders<\/b><\/a>.<\/p>\n Several pesticides have been linked<\/a> to early puberty, impaired fertility, and increased breast cancer risk<\/b>, suggesting that young girls \u2014 whose brains and breasts undergo rapid development during puberty \u2014 may be particularly vulnerable to pesticide exposures<\/b>.<\/p>\n Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, recently asked<\/a> teenage girls living in the intensively farmed Salinas Valley to wear silicone wristbands \u2014 which soak up environmental chemicals like a sponge \u2014 to gauge their pesticide exposures. Dacthal and chlorpyrifos were among the most frequently detected pesticides for these Latina girls, and concentrations of dacthal and permethrin were three times higher for those who lived close to fields.<\/p>\n California, the nation\u2019s most productive agricultural region, used<\/a> close to 209 million pounds of pesticides in 2016, the most recent statistics available, including many classified<\/a> as probable or possible carcinogens, endocrine disruptors (affecting the hormonal system), and reproductive or developmental toxicants.<\/p>\n Farmers applied<\/a> more than 370,000 pounds of dacthal on kale, broccoli, cauliflower, and other crops in 2015 and 2016. One of the highest levels recorded<\/a> in 2016 were in Lamont, a Central Valley town where the vast majority of residents are Hispanic and 35% of people live below the poverty line.<\/p>\n California growers applied 11.3 million pounds of pesticides to produce nearly 3 billion pounds of strawberries worth over $1.8 billion in 2016. For decades, the EPA gave strawberry growers an exemption to use methyl bromide, a fumigant banned by international treaty to protect the ozone layer that has also been tied<\/a> to birth defects.<\/p>\n Growers lost that exemption in 2017 and had already turned to other fumigants \u2014 with similar toxic properties.<\/p>\n But before they did, farmers routinely applied thousands of pounds of methyl bromide near predominantly Latino schools in violation<\/a> of the federal civil rights laws. They applied more than 14,500 pounds of methyl bromide \u2014 in just 2015 and 2016 alone \u2014 within a mile of Oxnard\u2019s Rio Mesa High School, where most students are Hispanic and which California health officials flagged<\/a> as the school with the most toxic pesticides sprayed nearby in a 2014 report.<\/p>\n During the same time, growers also doused fields near Rio Mesa with more than 142,000 pounds of chloropicrin, a choking agent once used in warfare and riot control, and 1,3-Dichloropropene (1,3-D), classified as a probable human carcinogen.<\/p>\n State regulators calculate risk based on averages of exposures to single pesticides over several months, even though growers can spray more than 100,000 pounds of fumigants like 1,3-D and chloropicrin in a single week. As a result, a 2016 study from the UCLA Sustainable Technology & Policy Program reported<\/a>, \u201cexposure to multiple pesticides occurs at a number of locations in the area, including sensitive sites like schools and daycares.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition, the study noted, human health risks from simultaneous exposures to drift-prone toxic chemicals<\/b>, like 1,3-D, chloropicrin, and metam sodium (a methyl bromide replacement), \u201cmay be significantly greater than the added risks of the individual components<\/b>.\u201d<\/p>\n Last year, California\u2019s Department of Pesticide Regulation measured the highest levels of 1,3-D the agency ever recorded at a high school in Shafter, a small Central Valley town, where 83% of the population is Hispanic and 25% live below the poverty line. The levels far exceeded those the state deemed \u201cunacceptably high\u201d when it issued a temporary ban in 1990.<\/p>\n The DPR relaxed its 1,3-D cancer risk standard in 2015 after the previous risk level was exceeded multiple times, says Anne Katten, director of the pesticide and worker safety project at the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation.<\/p>\n Following the 1,3-D spike last year, Katten and members of other advocacy groups met with state officials to discuss the risks to the communities. In a follow-up letter, the group pointed out that the agency\u2019s estimates of air concentrations far exceeded its own safety standards for both acute and chronic risks. \u201cWe urge DPR to immediately suspend all uses of 1,3-D,\u201d they wrote in an email, citing risks to nearby homes and elementary schools.<\/p>\n State regulators declined, noting that the monitoring data did not justify action to curb 1,3-D use. They did not acknowledge that residents and workers could be exposed to other pesticides, along with 1,3-D, that might increase their risk.<\/p>\n \u201cThe reality is that we have a regulatory framework that just assumes that these chemicals are fine and we don\u2019t need to regulate them in agriculture<\/b>,\u201d Trasande says. \u201cEven when the science tells us to do it<\/b>.\u201d<\/p>\n Produced by the Food & Environment Reporting Network, an independent non-profit news organization.<\/i><\/p>\n Pesticides have been linked<\/a> to an elevated risk of chronic disease, and they can be particularly harmful to farmworkers and children.<\/p>\n If you want to minimize pesticide exposure for you and your family, and help protect farmworkers and the environment, here are some steps you can take:<\/p>\nThe Environmental Working Group and Pesticides<\/h2>\n
Regulatory Gaps<\/h2>\n
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Unequal Exposures<\/h2>\n
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Editor\u2019s Note: How Can You Avoid the Risk of Pesticides?<\/h2>\n
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Tell us in the comments below:<\/h4>\n