Tag: Center on Race

First-in-the-World Online Pesticide Notification System launched, impacting farm working communities in Ventura County and elsewhere in California

by Community Contributor • March 25, 2025 • Comments Off

Irene Gomez, an Oxnard resident and member of the Coalition Advocating for Pesticide Safety – Ventura County or CAPS 805, raised a remaining concern: “When my community in Nyeland Acres had the pilot notification project, our biggest issue was that you couldn’t find out exactly where the pesticides would be applied – which farm? That’s still a problem with Spray Days. You can only know pesticides are being applied within a square mile, but not whether it’s coming from behind your house, across the street, or even a mile away.”

Pesticides applied within 2.5 miles linked to childhood cancers in Ventura, Kern counties

by Community Contributor • October 28, 2021 • Comments Off

Nurses, teachers, labor leaders, elected officials and concerned residents held a news conference at the Kern County Administrative Building in Bakersfield (on Oct. 28) to release a report revealing extensive use in Kern and Ventura Counties of 13 pesticides linked to childhood cancers. The group, organized by the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment (CRPE) and the Ventura County-Coalition Advocating for Pesticide Safety (VC-CAPS), called on state and local governments to restrict the use of these pesticides, and web-post warnings before they and other hazardous pesticides are used.

The report reveals regular use in the Kern-Ventura area of 11 out of 13 pesticides identified in two recent studies by UCLA as being linked to early childhood cancers. The UCLA studies found that these pesticides increase risk of a child developing specific forms of cancers ranging from 1.60 times (or 60% increased chance) to 3.38 times (or 238% elevated risk), if their mothers lived within 2.5 miles of the pesticide application while pregnant. More than 28 countries have banned or not approved 10 of the 13 pesticides.