(Beyond Pesticides, February 2, 2011) A bill that would make the state of New Jersey a national leader in banning pesticides on all school grounds was passed in a Senate environment committee Monday with unanimous bi-partisan support. The measure, dubbed The Child Safe Playing Field Act, would prohibit the use of most lawn pesticides on [...]

(Beyond Pesticides, December 15, 2010) Every year, more than 10,000 kids are poisoned by rodenticides (pesticides made to kill rodents) and virtually all of the calls to U.S. poison control centers concern children under six. New rules and restrictions set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will go into effect next June in an [...]

(Beyond Pesticides, November 12, 2010) On November 14, new restrictions that ban the outdoor use of pesticides on playgrounds or playing fields in New York will go into effect. In preparation for these new requirements, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) released draft guidance on October 27. This guidance is intended to [...]

(Beyond Pesticides, October 28, 2010) In an effort to combat a bedbug problem in a Brooklyn, New York elementary school, the Department of Education (DOE) paid a private contractor almost $100,000 to exterminate and, according to teachers, left the classrooms “soaked with a liquid bed bug killing chemical.” An odorous fluid was left behind on [...]

(Beyond Pesticides, September 17, 2010) A thirteen-year old girl in a Northern Virginia suburb has recently launched her own campaign to urge her neighbors to stop spraying pesticides, and we want you to do the same! With a growing body of scientific evidence proving that pesticides threaten the public’s health by increasing the risk of [...]

(Beyond Pesticides, August 25, 2010) Exposure to pesticides while in the womb may increase the odds that a child will have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to researchers at the University of California-Berkeley School of Public Health. Maternal metabolites of organophosphate pesticides have previously been associated with neurobehavioral deficits in children. The California researchers [...]

(Beyond Pesticides, August 24, 2010) Update: The Healthy Schools Act of 2010 (SB 1157) passed the State Assembly, but on September 29, 2010, Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill which would have required all schools in California to adopt integrated pest management (IPM), using the least hazardous pesticides available. Environmental and public health groups will continue [...]

(Beyond Pesticides, Aug 16, 2010) A recently released study conducted by the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences shows government agencies may be underestimating children’s dietary exposure to pesticides and, therefore, the inherent risks to children’s health. The study, “Assessing Children’s Dietary Pesticide Exposure- Direct measurement of Pesticide Residues in 24-Hour Duplicate Food Samples” lead [...]

(Beyond Pesticides, August 3, 2010) A new study shows that due to a flaw in standard risk assessments, which consider toxic effects at fixed exposure times, the risks posed by the neonicotinoid pesticides imidacloprid and thiacloprid are likely to be underestimated. The authors believe that minute quantities of imidicloprid may be playing a much larger [...]

(Beyond Pesticides, Aug 2, 2010) A new report conducted by an Ann Arbor, Michigan based coalition of health and environmental groups estimates that children’s exposure to toxic chemicals, including pesticides, cost Michigan billions of dollars each year. The study examines the costs associated with four environmentally related childhood diseases: lead poisoning, asthma, pediatric cancer, and [...]

(Beyond Pesticides, July 29, 2010) A set of mandatory rules intended to reduce pesticide use in public and private schools in Indiana is pending approval after voluntary implementation guidelines failed. The Indiana Pesticides Board submitted a draft proposal in June outlining rules to minimize pesticide exposure to students. These measures include banning the use of [...]

(Beyond Pesticides, July 26, 2010) Researchers at the Center for Children’s Environmental Health Research, UC Berkeley School of Public Health has found that the majority of child daycare centers surveyed do not understand the term Integrative Pest Management (IPM), and many spray pesticides without notifying parents or posting signs. Specifically, the survey found that over [...]

(Beyond Pesticides, June 17, 2010) Researchers have found detectable levels of common household pesticides in the majority of umbilical cord blood of babies born at an urban hospital. The study looks at concentrations of organophosphate (OP), carbamate, pyrethroids, and organochlorine pesticides in samples of umbilical cord blood taken from newborns delivered at the Johns Hopkins [...]

(Beyond Pesticides, May 21, 2010) Governor Patterson of New York signed the Child Safe Playing Field Act into law on Tuesday, marking a huge victory for grassroots environmental and human health groups. The law helps to protect children by banning the use of pesticides on school playing fields and play grounds. Schools will have one [...]

(Beyond Pesticides, May 18, 2010) A team of scientists from the University of Montreal and Harvard University have discovered that exposure to organophosphate pesticides is associated with increased risk of Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in children. Using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the study focused on 1,139 children from the general [...]

(Beyond Pesticides, May 12, 2010) Disturbed to learn that an advisory committee in his community in Boulder, Colorado had approved two new herbicides for use on city parks, a 9-year-old environmental activist organized a group of some two dozen children to protest the potential use of the herbicides in front of the Boulder County Courthouse [...]

(Beyond Pesticides, May 7, 2010) Human Rights Watch has released a scathing report entitled “Fields of Peril” on the treatment of child farm workers in the United States. To compile the report, Human Rights Watch interviewed child and young adult farm laborers and parents in all regions of the country, as well as farm managers, [...]

(Beyond Pesticides, April 26, 2010) With the growing number of viable, cost-effective alternative pest management strategies, it has never been easier for schools to eliminate the unnecessary use of toxic pesticide in school buildings and on school grounds. In celebration of Healthy School Day, an annual event coordinated by the Healthy Schools Network, Beyond Pesticides, [...]

(Beyond Pesticides, April 19, 2010) Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour last week signed a childhood asthma management and prevention bill into law that includes provisions requiring all public school districts to implement an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) program and prohibiting the use of hazardous substances such as cleaning products and pesticides. Although the bill reads as [...]

(Beyond Pesticides, April 8, 2010) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is requiring new restrictions on aluminum and magnesium phosphide products in an attempt to better protect people, especially children, from dangerous exposures. The new restrictions prohibit all uses of the products around residential areas and increase buffer zones for treatment around non-residential buildings that [...]

(Beyond Pesticides, April 6, 2010) A new report analyzing regulations from California’s 25 top agricultural counties finds that many counties do more to protect crops than children from potentially harmful pesticide drift. The report, Pesticide Protection Zones: Keeping Kids Safe at School, finds that eleven counties have no protection zones around schools at all, while [...]

(Beyond Pesticides, March 29, 2010) Prenatal exposure to pesticides at levels that do not cause adverse health effects in the mother can lead to delayed brain developmental in the child, according to the new study, “Neurobehavioral Deficits and Increased Blood Pressure in School-Age Children Prenatally Exposed to Pesticides,” published last month in the early online [...]