On Tuesday, Gov. Schwarzenegger signed Jared Huffman’s AB 2765 Bill which deals with governmental and agency power to conduct ‘emergency’ aerial spraying of pesticides. From the Monterey Herald Article:

The law requires the state to hold public hearings before spraying and to disclose ingredients of the spray to the public, he said. It requires an evaluation of the human and environmental health effects of proposed aerial spray and applies to any proposed aerial spraying in urban areas

Here is the fullest text of the bill I could locate.

What Does It Mean?
Meaning no disrespect to Huffman or the constituents who worked to get this bill signed, I am not really sure of how much closer this bill takes us to the understanding of pesticides we need to attain – namely, that poisoning human beings with chemicals is not acceptable, under any circumstances. The bill also does nothing to hold the CDFA accountable for the poisoning of thousands of Central Coast families in the fall of 2007 during the so-called LBAM emergency.

The moth has continued to do zero damage, as predicted by leading Californian scientists, but the people of Santa Cruz of Monterey haven’t seen a penny for the damages they’ve suffered and haven’t even seen CDFA reprimanded, penalized or brought to any kind of justice for their actions.

As I understand it, Bill AB 2765 means that government agencies must first disclose that they will be spraying pesticides on human beings, disclose what those pesticides are, and allow the public to comment on this. I believe we already saw this happen with the LBAM disaster. The Bill also requires an evaluation of human health and environmental effects. But by whom? OEHHA who thumbed their noses at the sickened children, women and men of the Central Coast last year, proclaiming that they couldn’t figure out whether the inhalation and ingestion of carcinogens and PM10 would cause human illness? The EPA who has made stunning headlines this year as they attempted to pay families in Florida to spray insecticide in their infants’ environment while documenting the effects on the infants’ health? Fish & Game who changed their story every five minutes last year about the hundreds of dead sea birds washing up on Monterey beaches…first stating that they were covered with yellow foam and then stating that they weren’t? Who, exactly, is going to be responsible for testing the ’safety’ of releasing deadly toxins into the environment of humans and wildlife, water supply and land?

And, most of all, why do we even need to test whether it’s okay or not to breathe, drink and eat pesticides at this point? DDT was really all we needed to study, wasn’t it? Or, Agent Orange? Or Roundup? Or any of the other thousand chemical compounds Big Ag are pumping into our world and bodies. We know pesticides are not oxygen, they aren’t food and they aren’t H20. Any substances beyond these three life-giving sources are NOT healthy for people, and there should be no excuse for suggesting otherwise in the 21st century.

So, while I applaud Huffman and supporters of this Bill for trying to reckon with the pesticide problem, I’m afraid I don’t see this Bill as a document which defines the real issue we are facing of corporate-government compacts making profits off the poisoning of our people, our animals and our Earth. That’s the Bill we need to see written and signed. That’s what we need to continue working toward.