California Seeks to Ban a Pesticide Linked to Developmental Disabilities
Meanwhile, the EPA is fighting to keep it.
-
CategorySustainability
California is one of several states seeking to ban chlorpyrifos, a pesticide linked to prenatal side effects in some studies. The pesticide has already been banned in Hawaii and there are efforts in Congress to ban it nationally. If California is successful in passing legislation curbing chlorpyrifos, the move from a large agricultural state could have a huge impact on its use nationwide.
“’I don’t see this as something we should still be debating,’ said Irva Hertz-Picciotto, an epidemiologist and director of the Environmental Health Sciences Center at the University of California-Davis.
According to KSBY in California’s Central Coast, “Hertz-Picciotto testified during a California Senate Health Committee hearing April 10 on California’s bill to ban use of the pesticide. She said more than three-dozen studies have demonstrated a connection between prenatal exposure of chlorpyrifos and developmental disabilities, including symptoms of autism.
“’No study has identified a level at which we can consider it safe,’ she told lawmakers.”
Read more about the chlorpyrifos controversy here.
Tracing the Journey That Brought a French Winemaking Family to Sonoma’s Hills
Hélène Seillan was nine years old when her family moved to Sonoma County from Bordeaux, France in 1996. Her father, Pierre Seillan, had spent the past two decades making wine in Bordeaux—and the Loire Valley before that—yet, through an early viticulture exchange program between the United States and France in 1974, he first cut his […]
The Semi-Illiterate, Italian Immigrant Who Built Watts Towers
It was a labor of love with community roots.
