California lawmakers may limit pesticides in food ‘forever’

By Nathan Donley, especially for CalMatters

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Amid growing awareness that so-called perennial chemicals, or PFASs, can linger in landscapes and waterways for centuries, federal and state regulators have repeatedly insisted they are working aggressively to protect us all from cancer-linked poisons.

They are not.

Even as regulators and lawmakers tout their baby steps limit chemicals in US drinking water foreverthey allow for a dramatic increase in the use of pesticides containing the chemicals on millions of acres of industrial agriculture. This often ends in waterways and drinking water supplies, including in California.

PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a group of synthetic chemicals used since the 1950s to make consumer products resistant to water, grease and heat. Studies have linked PFAS to cancer, reproductive harm, endocrine disruption and other health effects.

Worrying 14% of all active ingredients in conventional pesticides are now PFAS, according to a peer-reviewed study I co-authored with scientists from the Environmental Working Group and Public Officials for Environmental Responsibility. And it gets worse: hazardous substances make up 30% of the active ingredients of pesticides approved in the last 10 years alone.

Nowhere is the explosive use of PFAS pesticides more troubling than in California, which produces more than three-quarters of the fruit and nuts consumed in the US and almost half of the vegetables. In March, the US Geological Survey reported widespread water contamination with PFAS pesticides in the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys, where most of California’s fruits and vegetables are grown.

PFAS chemicals were found in almost 40% of non-organic fruit and vegetable samples tested by state regulators in 2023, according to a new report by the Environmental Working Group. This analysis found 17 different PFAS pesticides on more than half of 78 types of non-organic fruits and vegetables, including nectarines, peaches, plums, strawberries, blueberries, celery and green beans.

The proliferation of perennial chemicals in Californians’ food and the continued approval of PFAS pesticides by state regulators leaves no doubt that California lawmakers must adopt Assembly Bill 1603.

The measure would require products to disclose whether they contain PFAS and would ban any new approvals for PFAS pesticides. It will also phase out the use of PFAS pesticides over the next 10 years.

The bill faces a yes-or-die vote in the full California Assembly from May 29.

What reinforces the need for action is the fact that the US Environmental Protection Agency under President Donald Trump and the California Department of Pesticide Regulation are going in the wrong direction on PFAS pesticides.

Since Trump took office, the EPA has approved two PFAS pesticides and proposed approval three more.

And more recently, the California Office of Pesticides approved again the PFAS insecticide sulfoxaflor, even though it was repeatedly rejected by the state and federal courts due to its high toxicity to pollinators such as honey bees.

The pesticide industry claims that many new pesticides are not PFAS because they contain only one, instead of two, fully fluorinated carbons. But this claim, which is accepted by the EPA, ignores conventional wisdom scientific definitionthat any chemical with a single fully fluorinated carbon is a PFAS.

The it’s a grim reality that 23-35 million pounds of pesticide ingredients used annually in the United States are PFAS. California has registered 53 PFAS pesticides. And about £2.5 million of them poisons are administered per year in California cropland.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.