EPA sued over pesticides

SAN FRANCISCO
April 7, 2008 12:25pm

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is being sued to stop the continued use of four organophosphate pesticides commonly used in California on a wide variety of fruit, vegetable, and nut crops.

The four pesticides at issue are methidathion, oxydemeton-methyl, methamidophos, and ethoprop.

Filing the suit Monday are Earthjustice and Farmworker Justice on behalf of Pesticide Action Network North America; United Farm Workers; Teamsters Local 890, Sea Mar Community Health Centers; Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste; Beyond Pesticides; Natural Resources Defense Council; and Farm Labor Organizing Committee. California Rural Legal Assistance is also participating in the case on behalf of Moises Lopez, an individual farmworker in California.

Some of the pesticides have been detected in California's rural schoolyards and homes, Sequoia National Park, and Monterey Bay, the groups say.

"These four pesticides put thousands of farmworkers and their families at risk of serious illness every year," says Patti Goldman, an attorney for Earthjustice, an environmental law firm. "It is inexcusable for EPA to allow use of pesticides that they know are harming people, especially children."

Exposure can cause dizziness, vomiting, convulsions, numbness in the limbs, loss of intellectual functioning, and death. Some organophosphates also cause hormone disruption, birth defects, and cancer.

"Farmworkers and people living in and near agricultural regions, especially children, are at great risk of neurological and developmental damage due to exposure to these toxins," says Margaret Reeves, senior scientist at Pesticide Action Network North America, one of the plaintiffs.