New reports spotlight pesticides used in the food system and the harmful effects they are having on the nation’s children, including in the Monterey Bay region. In particular, the reports find that Latino children living or attending school near California agricultural fields face some of the greatest risks of exposure from pesticides linked to cancers and the developing brain. The reports are "Right without a Remedy: How the EPA Failed to Protect the Civil Rights of Latino Schoolchildren" by the Center on Race, Poverty, and the Environment (CRPE), and "Kids on the Frontline: Rural children & pesticide health harms" by the Pesticide Action Network.

CRPE’s Right without a Remedy discloses for the first time internal U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) documents that reveal EPA’s persistent unwillingness to enforce Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, regarding Latino schoolchildren’s exposure to dangerous pesticides. The report shows through emails and internal memoranda how EPA allowed its Office of Pesticide Programs to limit EPA’s enforcement of the Civil Rights Act and denied the children relief from on-going pesticide exposures.

“The CRPE report provides further evidence that regulators have known about the greater pesticide health threats Latino children face, yet have done nothing to protect them at the same level as white children. This is environmental racism. It’s illegal. It’s outrageous,” said Dr. Ann Lopez, Executive Director of the Center for Farmworker Families.

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Previous Coverage: Agricultural Pesticide Use Up 10% in Monterey, 9.4% in Santa Cruz || Fumigant Pesticides Put Central Coast Communities At Risk || California's New “Recommended Restrictions” for Chloropicrin are Inadequate || Groundbreaking Report Finds High Rates of Pesticide Use Near Monterey County Schools