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For Immediate Release
October, 14 2009, 01:50pm EDT
Contact:
Kathleen Sutcliffe
Earth Justice
(202) 667-4500, ext 235;
ksutcliffe@earthjustice.org
Heather Pilatic
Pesticide Action Network
heather@panna.org
Barb Howe
Farmworker Justice
(202) 293-5420, ext.307
bhowe@farmworkerjustice.org
Farm Workers and Allies Ask Gov't to Protect Kids From Toxic Pesticide Drift
Petition to EPA includes immediate no-spray buffer zones around homes, schools, day care centers for most toxic pesticides
LINDSAY, Calif.
Luis Medellin and his three little sisters - aged 5, 9 and 12 - live in
the middle of an orange grove in this small Central Valley town. During
the growing season, Luis and his sisters are awakened several times a
week by the sickly smell of nighttime pesticide spraying. What follows
is worse: searing headaches, nausea, vomiting.
But if a coalition of farm worker, public health, and children's
advocates are successful, Luis and his little sisters may one day be
able to sleep through the night without these toxic disruptions.
The public interest law firms Earthjustice and Farmworker Justice filed a petition today
(PDF) asking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to set safety
standards protecting children who grow up near farms from the harmful
effects of pesticide 'drift'
- the toxic spray or vapor that travels from treated fields. The groups
are also asking the agency to immediately adopt no-spray buffer zones
around homes, schools, parks and daycare centers for the most dangerous
and drift-prone pesticides.
The petition was filed on behalf of farm worker groups United Farm
Workers, Oregon-based Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste,
California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, and the Farm Labor
Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO as well as Physicians for Social
Responsibility, Washington-based Sea Mar Community Health Center,
Pesticide Action Network, and the million-plus member MomsRising.Org
The Medellin family's story is not unique. From apple orchards in
Washington to potato fields in Florida, poisonous pesticide 'clouds'
plague the people who live nearby - posing a particular risk to the
young children of the nation's farm workers, many of whom live in
industry housing at the field's edge.
"When farm workers come home after a long day in the fields and
orchards, they're faced with yet another worry - the poisons that are
settling in their homes, their lawns, their children's bodies," said
Erik Nicholson, National Vice President of United Farm Workers. "We
can't let another growing season go by. EPA needs to put an end to this
today."
In 1996, Congress required EPA to set standards by 2006 to protect
children from pesticides. Three years have passed since that deadline,
and EPA's job is only partially complete. The agency has made some
progress - banning the use of some pesticides in the home and on lawns.
But the agency has failed to protect children from these same
pesticides when they drift from treated fields into nearby yards,
homes, schools, parks and daycare centers.
"In farming communities throughout the country, children have been
abandoned by federal pesticide protections," said Earthjustice attorney
Janette Brimmer. "We're asking EPA to finish the job it started so
children who live, go to school, or play near farms and orchards are
kept safe from poisonous pesticides."
EPA has acknowledged the risk of pesticide drift, but still chose to go
ahead with a double-standard: protecting urban and suburban areas,
while leaving the children of farm workers and other rural kids
vulnerable.
"We traditionally think of farms as healthy places," said MomsRising.org
President Joan Blades. "But children and families across the country
are being poisoned by pesticides that travel from the fields into their
houses and bedrooms, causing serious and long-lasting damage to their
health. We already have standards barring the use of such pesticides
for homes and lawns to protect children. But all children deserve such
protection. You shouldn't have to live in the suburbs to be safe from
deadly pesticides."
"It's time the EPA put an end to this double-standard for farm
workers. EPA's policies must protect farm workers and their children
from unnecessary poisoning," said Farmworker Justice attorney Virginia
Ruiz.
"It's outrageous that our own government isn't protecting our children
from being poisoned by pesticides drifting on their homes and schools,"
said Julie Montgomery, Project Director and Attorney with California
Rural Legal Assistance Foundation. "How can parents possibly protect
their children from these dangers on their own?"
Pesticide poisoning reports and scientific studies show that pesticides are ending up in the air and in people's bodies at unsafe levels. Among a host of examples: recent air monitoring
(PDF) conducted near the Southwoods Elementary School in Hastings,
Florida, detected pesticides in every sample, sometimes at levels that
may pose serious health risks to young children.
"Children are especially vulnerable to pesticide exposures both because
their smaller bodies cannot break down toxins as well as adults, and
because their developmental processes are prone to being derailed --
even by very low-level exposure," explains Dr. Margaret Reeves, Senior
Scientist for Pesticide Action Network. "The particular pesticides
we're finding in our drift catching and biomonitoring results are some
of the worst: chlorpyrifos, diazinon, endosulfan...these are associated
with serious short- and long-term health effects. They are also
entirely unnecessary."
One of the pesticides identified as being so dangerous that the groups
have asked EPA to adopt immediate no-spray buffer zone is chlorpyrifos
- initially developed as a nerve toxin by the Nazis. The short term
effects of exposure to chlorpyrifos have been likened to a
chemically-induced flu: chest tightness, blurred vision, headaches,
coughing and wheezing, weakness, nausea and vomiting, coma, seizures,
and even death.
A copy of the petition is available here: https://www.earthjustice.org/library/legal_docs/petition-pesticides-in-the-air-kids-at-risk.pdf (PDF)
A fact sheet with background information on today's petition is available here: https://www.earthjustice.org/library/factsheets/pesticides_kid_factsheet.pdf (PDF)
A fact sheet detailing the specific health risks linked to pesticide exposure is available here: https://www.panna.org/node/2392
A background piece on the science behind pesticide drift is available here: https://www.panna.org/drift/science
The four-page results of Hastings, FL drift-catcher results are available here: https://www.panna.org/files/hastingsFLSum20080923.pdf (PDF)
Also available for interviews:
Janette Brimmer, Attorney, Earthjustice, (206) 343-7340, ext. 29, jbrimmer@earthjustice.org
Patti Goldman, Vice President of Litigation, Earthjustice, (206) 343-7340, ext. 32, pgoldman@earthjustice.org
Dr. Margaret Reeves, Senior Scientist, Pesticide Action Network, cell: 415.593.4351, mreeves@panna.org
LATEST NEWS
Pranksters Trick Former US Official Into Admitting Ukraine War Was Preventable
"This is as close to a smoking gun as I've ever seen on Ukraine," said one observer.
Dec 17, 2025
A former senior Biden administration official admitted during a recent interview with who she thought were aides to Ukraine's president that the Russian invasion of Ukraine could have been averted if Kyiv had agreed to stop seeking NATO membership.
Amanda Sloat—a former special assistant to then-President Joe Biden and senior director for Europe at the National Security Council—believed she was speaking with aides to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week when she sat down for a phone interview with who turned out to be the Russian prankster duo known as Vovan and Lexus.
“We had some conversations even before the war started about, what if Ukraine comes out and just says to Russia, ‘Fine, you know, we won’t go into NATO, you know, if that stops the war, if that stops the invasion’—which at that point it may well have done,” Sloat said. “There is certainly a question, three years on now, you know, would that have been better to do before the war started, would that have been better to do [at the] Istanbul talks? It certainly would have prevented the destruction and loss of life.”
However, Biden officials chose not to address Russia's main concerns regarding Ukraine and NATO—with disastrous results.
Sloat explained that she "was uncomfortable with the idea of the US pushing Ukraine" against pursuing NATO membership, "and sort of implicitly giving Russia some sort of sphere of influence or veto power on that."
"I don’t think [then-President Joe] Biden felt like it was his place to tell Ukraine what to do then, to tell Ukraine not to pursue NATO," she said.
Sloat is the latest in a series of former US officials who have fallen victim to Vovan and Lexus' pranks, including ex-Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and Mike Pompeo, UN Ambassador Samantha Power, and senior State Department official Victoria Nuland—who played a key role in a plot to overthrow the pro-Moscow government of then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych during the Euromaidan uprising of 2013-14.
Sloat's remarks during the interview implicitly belied the prevalent Western prewar narrative of an unprovoked Russian invasion—an assertion that ignored decades of provocation, beginning with the betrayal of a 1990 assurance by then-US Secretary of State James Baker to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand "one inch eastward" if the Soviets cooperated on German reunification.
Not only did NATO admit 13 new nations between then and the start of Russia's 2022 invasion, all of the new members were countries formerly in Moscow's orbit, and three—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—were ex-Soviet republics. The Biden administration's public pronouncements of an "open door" to Ukrainian NATO membership continued right up to Russia's invasion, and were particularly intolerable for Moscow—even if Russian leaders understood that the US was actually more opposed to Kyiv joining the alliance than in favor of such a potentially fraught outcome.
Responding to the prank, French political commentator Arnaud Bertrand said on X that "this is as close to a smoking gun as I've ever seen on Ukraine."
"Hundreds of thousands dead, a country in ruins, and the justification is America being 'uncomfortable' about not preserving optionality," he added. "Not even an actual gain—just the theoretical possibility of one day pulling Ukraine into NATO. The banality of evil."
"All of this will surely go down as one of the great missed opportunities of history."
Sloat's comments, noted Norwegian political scientist Glenn Diesen, come "after our political-media establishment has for four years smeared, censored, and cancelled anyone who claimed that NATO expansion triggered the war."
Referring to Sloat's acknowledgment that Russia's invasion of Ukraine could have been averted with a guarantee of Ukrainian neutrality, Jacobin staff writer Branko Marcetic wrote for Responsible Statecraft Tuesday that she "is not the first to have made this admission."
"As I documented two years ago, former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and former Biden Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines both likewise explicitly said that NATO’s potential expansion into Ukraine was the core grievance that motivated Putin’s decision to invade, and that, at least according to Stoltenberg, NATO rejected compromising on it."
"Zelensky has now publicly agreed to this concession to advance peace talks—only three years later, with Ukraine now in physical ruins, its economy destroyed, hundreds of thousands of casualties, and survivors traumatized and disabled on a mass scale," he lamented.
"All of this will surely go down as one of the great missed opportunities of history," Marcetic added. "Critics of the war and NATO policy have long said the war and its devastating impact could have been avoided by explicitly ruling out Ukrainian entry into NATO, only to be told they were spreading Kremlin propaganda. It turns out they were simply spreading Biden officials' own private thoughts."
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Dec 17, 2025
Underscoring expert warnings that exporting liquefied natural gas not only worsens the climate emergency but also drives up energy prices for Americans, Public Citizen revealed Tuesday that as LNG exports surged under the Trump administration, US households paid $12 billion more in utility bills from January through September than they did last year.
In other words, "the costs borne by residential consumers in the first nine months of 2025 are up 22%," or an average of $124 per family, according to an analysis of federal data by Tyson Slocum, director of the consumer advocacy group's Energy Program and author of the new report. "LNG exports are also up 22% over that same time."
His report highlights President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign pledges, pointing to a Newsweek op-ed and various speeches across the country. Slocum said in a statement that "Trump explicitly promised voters he would slash utility bills by half within the first year, yet in the first nine months of his term, they surged, squeezing some of the country's most vulnerable households."
Now, "1 in 6 Americans—21 million households—are behind on their energy bills," which "are rising at twice the rate of inflation," the report states. "Even registered Republican voters are increasingly blaming President Trump for the affordability crisis."
"Limiting or prohibiting LNG exports would provide immediate relief for households across the country, but it would require action from the White House."
It's not just "higher domestic natural gas prices, driven primarily by record LNG exports," affecting US utility prices, the report acknowledges. Other factors include "electric transmission and distribution costs, which include extreme weather and wildfire liabilities. These costs are administered by state or federal regulators and have been exacerbated by climate change."
"Electricity demand load growth, driven by the rise of artificial intelligence data centers, along with transportation electrification," is also having an impact, the document details. Additionally, "Trump's unprecedented cancellation and revocation of billions of dollars of permitted renewable energy projects, combined with his unlawful abuse of emergency authorities to impose punitive tariffs, have injected chaos into domestic supply chains, stifling domestic investment in energy infrastructure."
As the report explains:
Of these four factors, record natural gas exports not only represent the largest impact on natural gas prices, but feature clear statutory solutions to help protect consumers. The Natural Gas Act—passed by Congress during the Great Depression—asserts in Section 1 that "the business of transporting and selling natural gas for ultimate distribution to the public is affected with a public interest," with the US Supreme Court affirming that the "primary aim" of this 87-year-old law is "to protect consumers against exploitation at the hands of natural gas companies." Section 3 of the law forbids exports of natural gas unless the Department of Energy determines the exports to non-Free Trade Agreement countries are "consistent with the public interest."
Rather than living up to those obligations, Slocum said, "Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum have acted as global gas salesmen, traveling to Europe to push exports and gut European methane regulations while attacking mainstream climate science. Meanwhile, Trump has done nothing to keep prices down at home."
"Limiting or prohibiting LNG exports would provide immediate relief for households across the country, but it would require action from the White House," he added. "Trump would need to stand up to some of his fossil fuel donors to make our energy more affordable."
It's not just Public Citizen pushing for action by the president. US Sen. Edward Markey (D–Mass.)—the upper chamber's leading champion of the Green New Deal—joined a press event for the group's new report. He stressed that "record-breaking levels of natural gas exports are breaking the bank on your monthly energy bill."
Public Citizen released the report just a day after Bloomberg also noted what the export boom means for US energy prices.
"We have been talking about, in apocalyptic terms, for a decade now when the world would start taking away America's cheap gas," Peter Gardett, CEO of Noreva, an energy trading platform specializing in power, told Bloomberg. "Well, we're here."
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"Do you believe that these guys, these multibillionaires, are staying up at night, worrying about what AI and robotics will do to working families?"
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Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday called for a moratorium on the construction of new artificial intelligence data centers in the US amid growing nationwide backlash.
In a video posted on social media, Sanders (I-Vt.) explained why it's time for the government to hit the brakes AI data center projects, which have drawn protests all over the country for driving up electric bills and draining communities' water supplies.
Sanders began the video by acknowledging that AI has the potential to be a truly transformative technology, before noting that those who are pushing for its rapid development the most were the wealthiest people on the planet, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel.
"So here is a very simple question I'd like you to think about," Sanders continued. "Do you believe that these guys, these multibillionaires, are staying up at night, worrying about what AI and robotics will do to working families of our country and the world? Well, I don't think so."
Sanders then argued that AI's biggest backers are pushing the technology to further enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else by replacing human laborers entirely with computers.
Sanders then quoted Musk, who predicted that AI and robots would "replace all jobs" in the future, and then cited a quote from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who said that "humans won't be needed for most things."
Sanders then questioned how people will survive if AI meets its backers' goals and deprives people of jobs on a mass scale. This problem is being compounded, Sanders continued, because "very few members of Congress are seriously thinking about this."
In addition to discussing AI's potential to vastly undermine working people's economic power, he also touched on its social implications, and said he was concerned that "millions of kids in this country are becoming more and more isolated from real human relationships, and are getting their emotional support from AI."
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Sanders concluded by arguing that the push to advance and integrate AI is "moving very, very quickly," and without proper considerations for the economic and social impacts it will have.
The Vermont senator argued for his proposed moratorium on data center construction to give "democracy a chance to catch up with the transformative changes we are witnessing."
Sanders' message on data centers came on the same day that MLive reported that both Republican and Democratic politicians in Michigan have been rallying against the construction of more data centers, which have been championed by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
During a Tuesday anti-data center rally, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel slammed plans to build a 2.2-million-square-foot data center in Saline Township, and pointed to electric service company DTE's efforts to rush through the construction approval process as reason enough to oppose it.
“Do you guys trust DTE?" she asked. "Do you trust OpenAI? Do you trust Oracle to look out for our best interests here in Michigan?"
Republican gubernatorial candidate Anthony Hudson told MLive that he shared Nessel's criticism of the data center plan, and he questioned whether Michigan residents would see any economic benefit from it.
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Earlier this month, more than 230 environmental advocacy groups, led by Food and Water Watch, demanded a moratorium on building new data centers, which they said consumed unsustainable amounts of water and electricity, while also worsening the global climate emergency.
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