Protect Your Health from Pesticide Smog!

Dear Action Now Members,

Please consider attending one of these hearings--they speak directly to our mission statment in Action Now--this is our reason for being. Please come and make a statement---we don't often get a chance to let those who have the power to regulate hear us---take advantage of this opportunity.

Let's not wait and have to fight them later when they are spraying us again. Let them know that we are still here and we want the pesticides OUT of our lives.

Please pass this on.

Mitzi

Protect Your Health from Pesticide Smog!
Demand that regulators reduce the use of smog-forming pesticides!
Come and tell regulators to protect public health and reduce the use of smog-forming pesticides! DPR is holding two public hearings to get feedback on their plan. Come and tell them that unreliable technical fixes aren’t enough! The only guaranteed way to reduce smog emissions and protect public health is to reduce use of these smog-forming fumigant pesticides. DPR must create strong regulations to require reduced fumigant pesticide use.

Attend these public hearings:
Ontario
Tuesday, July 10, 2007, 5:00 p.m.
Doubletree Hotel Ontario Airport
Lake Gregory Room
222 North Vineyard Avenue, 91764-4431

Parlier (near Fresno)
Thursday, July 12, 2007, 5:00 p.m.
University of California Kearney Agricultural Center
Nectarine Room
9240 S. Riverbend Avenue, 93648

People who wish to speak will be asked to register before the hearing at the hearing site from 4:30 to 5:00 p.m.
Attend informal conversation sessions with DPR:
· Coachella: Thursday, July 5 Ÿ Lamont: Monday, July 9 Ÿ Ventura: Date TBD
Smog-forming pesticides cause air pollution and poison communities
Air pollution from smog damages lung tissue, exacerbates asthma, reduces lung capacity, increases respiratory and cardiovascular hospital admissions, and increases school and work absenteeism. Pesticides are the third largest contributor to smog in Ventura and the fourth largest contributor to smog in the San Joaquin Valley.

Many smog-causing pesticides are fumigants. Fumigants are pesticides that are applied in large quantities and easily become gases and drift away from where they’re applied, exposing nearby workers and other community members to harm. They have caused many mass farmworker and community poisonings, and day to day exposure can cause cancer, reproductive harm, respiratory or nervous system damage or damage to children’s development.
Pesticide polluters have been getting a free ride for over a decade
Regulations to reduce smog from pesticides are long overdue. In 1994, California regulators promised to adopt regulations that would reduce smog-forming emissions from pesticides by 20% below 1990 levels. But the regulators did not keep their promise, leaving California communities breathing polluted air. In 2006, a coalition of community-based environmental justice groups won a lawsuit that requires regulators to fulfill their promise to clean the air from smog-forming pesticides.

By playing with numbers, regulators are continuing to allow high use of smog-forming pesticides
As a result of the lawsuit, the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) is creating regulations to reduce emissions from smog-forming pesticides by 20% below 1991 levels in the Sacramento, San Joaquin Valley, Ventura, Southeast Desert and South Coast air basins. However, in the draft regulations, DPR has played with numbers and used unreliable studies to allow growers to keep using as much smog-forming fumigant pesticides as before, while trying to make it look like they have achieved emission reductions. With this slight of hand, DPR is undermining public health by continuing to allow extensive use of health-threatening, smog-forming fumigant pesticides.
For more information, please contact Californians for Pesticide Reform (Andrea Wilson 888-277-4880, andrea@igc.org, or Teresa DeAnda 661-304-4080, teresa@igc.org) or Coalition for Clean Air (Luis Cabrales 562-858-5596, luis@coalitionforcleanair.org)
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On-going Campaign!

The Faith Community letter outlined below in the June 22 post will be an on-going campaign to educate the public about healthy lawn care. The deadline for presenting the first letter to ChemLawn will be this coming Thursday, June 28, but con't let that date end your efforts to contact faith institutions to sign on!

Last year Action Now addressed pesticide use in several church preschools in Los Angeles and we found the teachers and staff very open and interested in the issue. Toxics reduction IS a sacred issue. The time has come for the faith community to embrace and begin active stewardship of the health of the planet.

Lawn Care Action!

Many of us who are concerned about the effects of toxic chemicals on the health of our families and the environment are also members of churches, synagogs, temples, mosques and meditation centers. Action Now is helping to put out a letter to be signed by institutions of faith and presented to the TruGreen ChemLawn company later this month in Chicago. It encourages the company to end thier use of harmful chemicals on lawns throughout the country. This is a huge opportunity to make a difference! If you are connected to an institution of faith (or know anyone who is), please click on this link and pass the letter on to them. Tell them why you are encouraging them to sign it.


http://www.refusetousechemlawn.org/open_letter%20to_the_faith_community2.

Beyond Pesticides Forum Update

We are grateful to BEYOND PESTICIDES for the scholarship which helped two members attend the conference in Chicago in June.