These chemicals are linked to issues with children's brain development
Monterey County, part of the "salad bowl of the world," still has a harmful pesticide problem that could put half of pregnant women in the area at risk.
The use of organophosphates -- a type of agricultural pesticide linked to adverse impacts on children's brain development -- jumped by 26% from 2016 to 2021 in Monterey County, a recent study found. This was despite the fact that, across California, use of these chemicals dropped after the state banned the most common one -- chlorpyrifos -- in 2020. Monterey was a major outlier, since only one other county, Santa Barbara, increased use, and only by 4%.
"Although organophosphate use went down overall after the ban, and that can offer some public health benefits, those benefits were not experienced equally," Miriam Rotkin-Ellman, an independent public health researcher and lead author of the study, told SFGATE. "Monterey County is one of the remaining hot spots."
The researchers found that 50.1% of pregnant women in Monterey County who gave birth in 2021 lived within just 1 kilometer of organophosphate application. By comparison, just 7.5% of pregnant women lived that close to the pesticide use statewide. The inequities were stark, with five times as many pregnant people who identified as Hispanic or Latino having this chemical exposure in Monterey, as compared to this same group statewide.
In the study, Rotkin-Ellman and her colleagues calculated the change in agricultural organophosphate pesticide application, by weight, between 2016 and 2021. They investigated the spatial and demographic patterns of application within 1 kilometer of residences during pregnancies that corresponded to births statewide in 2021.
"Not only is organophosphate use geographically not uniform, but there are also some really marked racial and ethnic disparities, with Hispanic and Latine families experiencing a huge burden," Rotkin-Ellman said.
The authors included researchers from Public Health Institute's Tracking California and UC Berkeley's Center for Environmental Research and Community Health.
Some of Monterey's big crops, like lettuce, are labor-intensive -- so people live close to the fields -- and continue to be major users of organophosphates other than chlorpyrifos, the study reported. By contrast, in the Central Valley, the now-banned chlorpyrifos had dominated the pesticide use on tree nuts and citrus.
Organophosphates are neurotoxicants that can lead to muscle spasms, confusion, seizures and even -- in extreme cases -- death, according to the study. For children, especially those exposed in utero, the study links the pesticides to adverse neurodevelopmental impacts such as reduced IQ, autism, ADHD and cerebral palsy.
Following the release of the study, community members and advocates gathered in a demonstration outside the Monterey County Government Center in Salinas at the end of September. Some had a list of demands for regulators, including establishing stronger buffer zones between pesticide use and residential areas, schools and day care centers. They also pushed for expanding environmental monitoring, requiring real-time pesticide use notifications -- and phasing out use of organophosphates.
"There's a history behind this kind of environmental racism, where the people that tend to be impacted are most typically people of color -- in this case, Latinos and Latinas," Jacob Sandoval, state director of the California League of United Latin American Citizens, told SFGATE. "What's alarming is that history has told us that eventually this gets solved, but not until a lot of people get sick or have been impacted by these pesticides."