released a study in March<\/a> that found that nearly 40% of California\u2019s conventionally grown fruits and vegetables tested contained PFAS residues, including 90% of peaches and nectarines.<\/p>\nThe EWG, one of the bill\u2019s supporters, uses a broader criteria to define PFAS than the state and federal authorities. <\/p>\n
A spokesperson for California\u2019s Dept. of Pesticide Regulation, which oversees pesticide use, said the EWG report looked at detections of the PFAS, but the state \u201clooks at how the detections compare to federal tolerance levels.\u201d<\/p>\n
At a June Senate committee hearing on Schultz\u2019s bill, EWG\u2019s chief science officer, David Andrews, said that PFAS pesticides \u201cfall into a regulatory blind spot.\u201d He also said regulators, including the state, have \u201cbeen inadequate with respect to evaluating immune system harm or the cumulative impacts of these very small PFAS.\u201d<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the Dept. of Pesticide Regulation declined to comment on Schultz\u2019s bill.<\/p>\n
Taylor Triffo, a representative for a coalition of California agricultural associations, said at a different Senate hearing in June that the bill\u2019s original language to ban new PFAS chemicals \u201cwould deny California farmers access to [the] next generation of crop protection tools that are safer, more targeted, require lower use rates and help address emerging pests and diseases.\u201d<\/p>\n
Representatives for agriculture groups said at hearings last month that they don\u2019t object to the state flagging PFAS chemicals in the state database. <\/p>\n
Nearly half of the country\u2019s vegetables and more than three-quarters of its fruits and nuts come from California, according to the state. <\/p>\n
Sen. Anna Caballero (D-Merced), chair of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, called pesticide use a \u201cbalance\u201d at the June hearing before voting for the amended version.<\/p>\n
\u201cPart of the challenge agriculture is facing right now is pest invasion from other countries where the critters have moved on plants and in soil and have come into the state,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to do everything, I think, we can to maintain our agricultural production, because we produce products that are produced almost nowhere else in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Isabella Quinonez, assistant director of Public Affairs at the California Farm Bureau, said her group objected to the original bill because it would have restricted products based on their chemical class rather than on a pesticide\u2019s scientific evaluation of risk. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re confident in the Department of Pesticide Regulation\u2019s rigorous, science-based regulatory process, which includes residue studies, groundwater monitoring, and ongoing reevaluations,\u201d Quinonez said.<\/p>\n
Schultz told The Times he hopes to work with the Dept. of Pesticide Regulation on oversight in the coming years. He rejected any premise that there is \u201cabsolutely nothing to worry about, nothing off [with PFAS], because that\u2019s just inconsistent with the science.\u201d<\/p>\n
Times staff writer Susanne Rust contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SACRAMENTO\u00a0\u2014\u00a0California lawmakers rejected legislation that would have banned pesticides with so-called \u201cforever\u201d chemicals from use on California\u2019s farms,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417841,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3899,7,85237,9,4193,8,3655,167116,167117,37421,3652,99298,1301,11291,27423,11662,4743,4746],"class_list":["post-417840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-assembly-bill","tag-california","tag-california-farm","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-lawmaker","tag-california-news","tag-chemical","tag-ewg","tag-health-risk","tag-pesticide","tag-pfas","tag-pfas-chemical","tag-regulation","tag-representative","tag-schultz","tag-state-lawmaker","tag-study","tag-use"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417840","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=417840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}