28
May
Racial Disparities in Exposure to Ag Pesticides Documented while Trump Administration Dismantles Programs
(Beyond Pesticides, May 28, 2025) A study in Birth Defects Research bolsters existing evidence that agricultural workers, and specifically Hispanic workers in California, are disproportionately bearing the burden of pesticide exposures. Caroline Cox, formerly of the Center for Environmental Health in Oakland, and Jonathan K. London, PhD of the University of California, Davis, examine how currently-used agricultural pesticides unequally affect communities along racial and ethnic gradients. Ms. Cox is a member of Beyond Pesticides’ board.
Using 2022 data from the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (CDPR) and the U.S. Census Bureau, the researchers analyzed county, census tract, and school district data for the percentage of non-Hispanic White population in each population unit and determined the total agricultural use of commercial formulations of pesticides in the same units. CDPR reporting system’s granular data, including application locations at a resolution of one square mile, and the specific products, dates, and amounts of pesticides used, allows comparison of the data with demographic records. The results show that Hispanics’ exposure status is robust, independent of current or past data or “individual pesticides of public health concern.” Pesticides that harm reproductive health were strikingly concentrated among Hispanic populations.
There is abundant evidence of racial and ethnic disparities in exposure to environmental hazards. A University of California, Berkeley study from 2015, for example, found that Hispanics were six times more likely than non-Hispanic Whites to live in zip codes most affected by such hazards, followed by African Americans, Native Americans, and Asian/Pacific Islanders. Pesticide use and toxic chemical releases were the hazards most unequally distributed. As Beyond Pesticides noted last year, “83 percent of farmworkers consider themselves Hispanic/Latino.”
The authors observe that mitigating such workers’ risk has been obstructed by the agricultural industry’s resistance to state pesticide regulations’ scope and enforcement. Moreover, they state, federal law imposes stricter limits on pesticide residues in food than on worker exposures. This illustrates the skew in social priorities – while pesticide residues in food should certainly be as low as possible (Beyond Pesticides advocates complete elimination), the population of people who grow, harvest, and process everyone’s food should be equally protected.
There are three other variables strongly associated with unequal pesticide use patterns: income, education level, and the prevalence of agricultural employment. In our 2024 analysis cited above, we found that “agricultural workers usually earn less than $20,000 per year. It’s difficult for them to find jobs other than field labor, as there is almost no upward mobility in agriculture and many of their skills are not transferable to other occupations.”
The authors note that California has had a statutory definition of environmental justice since 1970, and CDPR includes a commitment to it in its strategic plan. CDPR has also set a goal of eliminating the use of “priority pesticides” by 2050. Although that list has yet to be determined, CDPR’s sustainable pest management roadmap calls priority pesticides “a subset of high-risk pesticides” having “active ingredients that are highly hazardous and/or formulations or uses that pose a likelihood of, or are known to cause, significant or widespread human and/or ecological impacts from their use.”
The Cox-London study includes 1,3-dichloropropene, chloropicrin, glyphosate, malathion, paraquat, and sulfur, selected because each is considered of public health concern in California. The first four have been classified as carcinogens and variously associated with many other health harms, including asthma, lowered children’s IQ scores, liver damage, and cognitive impairment. Paraquat is acutely toxic in very small amounts. According to a 2016 Centers for Disease Control report, elemental sulfur (the most heavily applied pesticide in California) and glyphosate were tied as the third and fourth most frequently reported chemicals causing acute pesticide injury. Beyond Pesticides reported last September on a study showing that Latinx children from rural farmworker families suffer more DNA damage from organophosphate pesticide exposure than children from urban families.
California’s enshrined commitment to environmental justice, the authors note, is not perfect. However, it may serve as a bulwark against the Trump administration’s abrupt and complete abandonment of the principle. Trump has dismissed 168 employees in the EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights; axed at least 384 environmental and climate justice grants from the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022; and plans to close all of the environmental justice offices at EPA’s regional centers.
There is already national pushback. See Beyond Pesticides’ April 9 news brief and call to action, detailing an effort by ten Democratic U.S. senators to prevent the dismantlement of the Biden administration’s considerable efforts to improve environmental justice. As one industry-aligned law firm put it, “The regulated community should prepare for ‘blue state’-led regulators and attorneys general to pursue a vigorous counter-response to the Trump administration’s policies, which may include heightened enforcement actions, new state and local EJ rules, and added staffing for state environmental agencies.” Non-governmental environmental justice advocates are also working against the Trump administration’s attempts to erase both the strong evidence of injustice and policies to address it.
At its most basic level, environmental justice is simply the principle that the risks as well as the benefits of human practices involved in producing everyone’s requirements for life and driving our economic engines should be evenly distributed. This is nothing less than the same truth enshrined in U.S. constitutional commitments to equality and justice for all.
All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.
Sources:
Racial and Ethnic Disparities in California’s Use of Agricultural Pesticides
Caroline Cox and Jonathan K London
Birth Defects Research, 2025
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/author/NZXBBRWHQYDDIJH8WJUZ?target=10.1002/bdr2.2480
Highlighting the Connection—Environmental Racism and the Agricultural Industry Through History
Beyond Pesticides, June 9, 2022
https://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2022/06/highlighting-the-connection-environmental-racism-and-the-agricultural-industry-through-history/
Disproportionate Pesticide Harm Is Racial Injustice
Beyond Pesticides Retrospective
January 5, 2021
Disproportionate Pesticide Hazards to Farmworkers and People of Color Documented. . .Again
Disproportionate Pesticide Hazards to Farmworkers and People of Color Documented. . .Again
Beyond Pesticides, February 16, 2024
https://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2024/02/disproportionate-pesticide-hazards-to-farmworkers-and-people-of-color-documented-again/
Neurodevelopmental Disorders Studied as an Environmental Justice Concern
Beyond Pesticides, October 26, 2023
https://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2023/10/a-review-of-200-studies-on-the-disparities-in-neurotoxins-exposures-and-neurodevelopmental-disorders-studied-as-an-environmental-justice-concern/
Study Shows Disproportionate Pesticide Exposure and Resulting DNA Damage to Latinx Farmworker Children
Beyond Pesticides, September 26, 2024
https://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2024/09/study-shows-disproportionate-pesticide-exposure-and-resulting-dna-damage-to-latinx-farmworker-children/
Pesticide-Induced Diseases: Body Burden
Pesticide Induced Diseases Database
Beyond Pesticides
https://www.beyondpesticides.org/resources/pesticide-induced-diseases-database/body-burden
Acute Occupational Pesticide-Related Illness and Injury — United States, 2007–2011
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report
Centers for Disease Control
October 14, 2016
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/63/wr/pdfs/mm6355a3.pdf
CDPR (California Dept of Pesticide Regulation). 2023a. “Accelerating
Sustainable Pest Management: A Roadmap for California.”
https://www.cdpr.ca.gov/docs/sustainable_pest_management_roadmap/ |
https://www.cdpr.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/spm_executive_summary.pdf
