of production. Under rules to be spelled out on pesticide containers, the chemicals
could not be allowed to drift on people, animals, homes, buildings, parks, wetlands,
forests, pastures, or crops for which the spray was not intended. The labels would
specify equipment sizes, the wind conditions under which spraying could take place,
and the maximum distances from crops that spray could be released.
The EPA contended that the label rules would reduce the risks from pesticides
without hurting farmers. But the agency had recently told the House Agriculture Com-
mittee that the standards proposed earlier would be revised before being made final.
States receive some 2,500 complaints annually about pesticide drift, and carry out
enforcement actions on roughly 800 of them each year; the EPA estimates that there
are probably many more unreported incidents. In 1999, 180 people in California’s
San Joaquin Valley were forced to evacuate when they were overcome by fumes from
the spraying of a potato field. Months later, about thirty individuals still had respira-
tory problems, headaches, and dizziness.
In 2000, a herbicide that Bureau of Land Management employees were spraying
on federal property in Idaho drifted onto nearby farmland and caused $100 million
in damage to potato, wheat, and sugar beet crops.
Critics of the EPA’s proposed rules questioned whether the problem was as serious
as the EPA maintained, and argued that the standards did not take into account dif-
ferences in topography and equipment.
In California, the number of spray-drift incidents in which at least one person was
exposed to a pesticide dropped from ninety-four in 1995 to forty-one in 2000, the
latest year for which figures were available. In comments filed with the EPA, the pes-
ticide industry claimed the proposed rules would set a ‘‘zero-drift’’ policy for which
pesticide use could not be maintained.
The deputy director of California’s Department of Pesticide Regulation disagreed,
stating that federal rules were necessary because states were not allowed to regulate
pesticide labels. He said that having uniform standards nationwide ‘‘is better from
our perspective as regulators but also for the industry.’’^5No Federal ActionThe EPA has yet to act on controlling spray drift on a national scale. Despite the
proposal to strengthen label provisions, no meaningful action followed. After being
swamped by what the EPA called a ‘‘relatively huge response’’—5,000 comments—and
after extending the comments deadline twice, the agency decided to scrap the proposed
change altogether and start over.
Environmentalists by and large supported the stronger label provisions, while argu-
ing that even more needed to be accomplished. Not to be outdone, the pesticide
industry claimed that these changes would be too expensive. Currently, U.S. pesticide
law offers citizens no particular protection against spray drift. An EPA official stated,
‘‘The bottom line is that someone following the approved procedure for spraying a
lawn or landscape with chemicals has the right to do it.’’190 | Pesticides