School Transportation News Magazine | November 2009
[Top Story]
Cleaning Up the Air Around Bus Stops Studies have shown that pesticides from local farms can drift to nearby bus stops and into children’s lungs
By Stephane Babcock Exhaust and smog are nothing new to
children who live in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago and Detroit. But to a child who lives among swaying crops and country roads, they are almost foreign. Te ben- efits of growing up around open fields and rural settings can sometimes become
have adverse effects, according to Wake Forest University School of Medicine Pro- fessor Sara Quandt. “Te immediate effects are burning
eyes, skin rashes, and if they get enough, and if it’s a certain type of pesticide, there can be neurological effects,” said Quandt. During a 2006 study of the homes of
Pesticides can make their way onto the food children eat, into the homes of farm workers and even in the air around school bus stops.
less advantageous, especially for children residing on or near farms. Pesticides, al- though useful for protecting crops from the swarms of dinner-ready insects, can sometimes be carried past the fields of corn and into the lungs of school children, some waiting at school bus stops. “Ingestion of pesticides by anyone can
change the formation of healthy cells in the body, causing or promoting the growth of cancerous cells,” said Minneapolis Pub- lic Schools’ Denny Coughlin, who grew up on a farm in north central Minnesota and imagined being a farmer one day. “At the early ages, it has a stronger effect. If the pes- ticides are sprayed from the air while chil- dren are standing at a bus stop, I can see where parents have concern.” Tis concern is not a new one. Studies
have shown that exposure over long pe- riods of time, even in small amounts, can
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migrant farm workers, Quandt and her associates not only demonstrated that there was pesticide residue brought inside on the workers’ clothes, known as para- occupational exposure, there was also an association between the pesticides in the home and how close the families lived to the fields. Urine samples were collected from 60 children, ages 1 to 6 years old, whose parents were farm workers in six counties in North Carolina. Tey showed that the children had higher levels of or- ganophosphate metabolites, a by-product of the immune system attacking pesti- cides with enzymes, breaking them down like the stomach does with food. “We know what the metabolites are for
certain pesticides, so if you find them in the urine, it’s evidence that they’ve been exposed. In other cases, the pesticides’ molecules come out basically whole, and so you’re finding the parent compound. Tat’s evidence that it’s really gotten into the body,” explained Quandt. Pesticides can be ingested via food that
carries residue, it can be inhaled when in the air and it can also be absorbed through the skin. “Since we don’t know how much causes
what ill effect, we use the precautionary principle — you shouldn’t be exposed to it,” advised Quandt.
AWARENESS LEADS TO PREVEN- TION While pesticide exposure is not an issue
limited to one region or state, there have been a few stand-outs in taking steps to-
wards prevention. In 1990, the Washington State Department of Health (DOH) estab- lished the Pesticide Incident Reporting and Tracking (PIRT) Review Panel as a response to a number of anecdotal accounts of hu- man illness and pesticide drift associated with agricultural operations at that time. Te PIRT Panel also oversees agency re- sponsiveness to complaints and summariz- es all the incident data into a single annual report called the PIRT report. “Tere were complaints that the en-
forcement agencies were not responsive enough when notified of these incidents,” said Barbara Morrissey, a toxicologist with the Pesticide Program: Illness Monitoring and Prevention at the DOH. “Te legisla- ture established the PIRT panel to review the human illness incidents from DOH, as well as pesticide-related investigations by the other state agencies.” Washington’s legislature also funded a
two-year pilot project and partnered with Richard Fenske at the University of Wash- ington and Vincent Hebert at Washington State University to design and conduct air monitoring studies to measure pesticides in the air of agricultural communities. Te results of the study can be viewed at
www.stnonline.com/go/349. Although the study did not measure the health ef- fects of pesticide in children, it looked at the pesticide levels present in the air. School data from the DOH’s pesticide
program was compiled and published along with data from other states that also monitor pesticide related illnesses in the July 2005 issue of the Journal of the Ameri- can Medical Association. Te study iden- tified 2,593 pesticide-related illnesses at schools nationwide over a five-year period. Findings from the JAMA article included:
• Reported symptoms of skin and eye ir- ritation; coughing and other respiratory effects; nausea, vomiting, and dizziness;
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