{"id":348300,"date":"2026-06-05T17:58:27","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T17:58:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/348300\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T17:58:27","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T17:58:27","slug":"despites-new-california-pesticide-rules-applications-of-dangerous-fumigant-spike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/348300\/","title":{"rendered":"Despites new California pesticide rules, applications of dangerous fumigant spike"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News<\/a>, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

California regulators passed a rule in January 2024 that they said would protect communities from one of the state\u2019s most popular, and dangerous, pesticides.<\/p>\n

For decades, they knew that 1,3-dichloropropane \u2014 or 1,3-D \u2014 causes tumors in multiple organs in laboratory animals, which led the state to flag it as a carcinogen in 1989. Yet regulators allowed growers to fumigate fields with large volumes of 1,3-D to kill anything living in the soil before planting strawberries, almonds, grapes and other billion-dollar<\/a> crops.<\/p>\n

But now, a year after regulators implemented a rule they said would reduce cancer risk<\/a> by decreasing the amount of 1,3-D in the air, applications of the highly volatile compound have spiked, state records<\/a> show.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Growers applied a million more pounds of 1,3-D last year than they did in either 2023, before regulators enacted the \u201cresidential bystander<\/a>\u201d rule, or in 2024, after they implemented it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Increases were highest in Kern and San Joaquin counties, where it was used mostly on almond and grape plantings. Notably, the \u201cadjusted total pounds<\/a>\u201d\u2014 which accounts for different application methods, weather conditions and other factors that affect how much of the volatile pesticide escapes into the air \u2014 nearly doubled in both counties and increased by almost 20% statewide.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir new regulations are failures,\u201d said Mark Weller, the campaign director for the statewide public-interest group coalition Californians for Pesticide Reform. \u201cThey put in new regulations and 1,3-D use went up.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Department of Pesticide Regulation, or DPR, enacted new rules in 2024 to restrict the use of 1,3-D to protect residential bystanders by implementing setback distances, requiring deeper injection in soil with higher moisture content, along with new fumigation methods and tarp requirements to reduce fumigant emissions into the atmosphere, said agency spokesperson Amy MacPherson. \u201cDPR specifically developed methods that could allow for comparable levels of use while reducing overall emissions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anne Katten, pesticide and work health and safety project director for the nonprofit California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, analyzed emissions detected at an air monitor<\/a> in Delhi, California, one of six monitors<\/a> operated by DPR. Katten found a 30% increase in average levels of 1,3-D in the air during the first three quarters of 2025 \u2014 the most recent publicly available data \u2014 compared to the same period in 2024.<\/p>\n

Delhi is a largely Latino town in Merced County, where the $10 billion<\/a> agriculture industry employs 1 in 5 residents and farmers primarily use 1,3-D to grow almonds and sweet potatoes. Merced is also where regulators detected alarmingly high levels<\/a> of 1,3-D at a junior high school in 1990 and suspended its use for five years.<\/p>\n

Public health policy assumes<\/a> that there is no safe level of exposure to a carcinogen, to account for disparities in exposure and variable susceptibility across different populations. Fumigants like 1,3-D can also produce severe short-term symptoms<\/a>, including respiratory distress, chest pains, eye irritation and dizziness.<\/p>\n

In 2023, researchers in China reported<\/a> what they believed to be the first death from inhaling 1.3-D, which commonly causes nausea, dizziness and headaches in exposed<\/a> California farmworkers. A 50-year-old Chinese greenhouse worker died of renal failure and brain swelling more than a week after a brief encounter with 1,3-D in a poorly ventilated workspace.<\/p>\n

1,3-D is now banned in 40 countries<\/a>, according to Pesticide Action Network International.<\/p>\n

The whole point of the regulations was not necessarily to reduce 1,3-D use but to reduce emissions, said Caroline Cox, a retired pesticide scientist and former research director at the nonprofit Center for Environmental Health. \u201cIt just doesn\u2019t seem like the regulations are really doing what they were designed to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Farmworker communities and their allies have tried lawsuits, media<\/a> <\/a>campaigns<\/a> and die-in protests<\/a> to compel pesticide regulators to protect them from 1,3-D. In February, they returned to court to seek relief from DPR\u2019s \u201ccontinued failure to meet its legal obligations to protect farmworkers and other members of the public from \u2026 a toxic, cancer-causing fumigant.\u201d<\/p>\n

DPR now has two separate safety levels for the same chemical, the 2024 residential bystander rule and another rule for occupational bystanders, which went into effect at the beginning of 2026. Having two different 1,3-D regulatory targets for residents and workers does not account for the fact that farmworker communities, where people live and work next to treated fields, typically face much higher exposure risks from childhood to old age.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth regulations miss the mark and allow for the continued use of 1,3-D in a way that neither satisfies DPR\u2019s mandatory legal obligations nor sufficiently protects public health,\u201d farmworker and community advocates argued in their legal brief<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Before enacting the new rules, DPR capped the amount of 1,3-D growers could apply within a roughly 36-square-mile area called a township. DPR did not include a township cap in the 2024 regulations because agency officials expected<\/a> the setbacks and other additional requirements to mitigate both acute and cancer risks. Still, the cap remained in place, due to a court order, until January, when the occupational bystander rule went into effect.<\/p>\n

One township in Kern County already exceeded the previously required annual township cap, and several in Kern and Merced counties are approaching it, in just the first quarter of this year, state records<\/a> show. As a 2024 Inside Climate News analysis<\/a> found, the disproportionate burden of pesticide exposure falls on immigrants with limited English proficiency \u2014 which describes the majority<\/a> of California\u2019s farmworker population.<\/p>\n

DPR\u2019s MacPherson attributed increased applications of 1,3-D to \u201cunusually high replanting of vineyards and orchards in Kern County, which only occurs about once every 10 to 20 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

DPR is monitoring areas with relatively high use in the first quarter, she said, but needs to see a full year of data before drawing \u201cmeaningful conclusions.\u201d<\/p>\n

DPR released a plan<\/a> to accelerate sustainable pest management in 2024 with a top goal of eliminating the adverse human health and environmental impacts associated with pesticide use. It does not include a list of priority pesticides.<\/p>\n

Seeing elevated emissions of 1,3-D after regulators removed the cap troubles Katten at the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation. \u201cThey were saying everything was going to be OK because things were on a downward trend, and they clearly aren\u2019t,\u201d Katten said. \u201cTheir sustainable pest management efforts are not bearing fruit yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

At a recent meeting with DPR, Weller told staff members the agency used to be committed to reducing fumigant use in California. \u201cAre you still interested in that?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

No one answered yes, he said.<\/p>\n

Inside Climate News<\/a> is the oldest and largest dedicated climate newsroom in the nation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348301,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1955,7,9,8,643,17535,1570,41318,19179],"class_list":["post-348300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-agriculture","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-environment","tag-farmworkers","tag-health","tag-pesticides","tag-state-region"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}