Talking Points

This legislation will:

• Reduce the use of Toxicity Category I (carcinogenic to humans) pesticides;
• Inform the public of their pesticide exposure;
• Reduce pest management costs; and
• Improve water, air, and soil quality.

Integrated Pest Management (IPM) has the potential to reduce pest management costs and health care costs.

• Integrated pest management strives to reduce pesticide use by applying non-chemical pest control strategies.
• IPM also reduces pesticide accidents and spills as well as problems stemming from pesticide drift, runoff, and residue. There are less product costs due to decreased input costs, smaller offset costs for fewer accidents, and a minimized need to compensate for pesticide resistant pests.
• Less pesticide exposure reduces health ailments related to pesticide exposure.

People have the right to know what is in their water, soil, air, and homes.

• Pesticide posting and notification has met with citizen approval where it has been implemented.
• People want to protect themselves and their loved ones from toxic exposure.
• Pesticides pass from the mother to her fetus; mothers want to know what their babies are subjected to.
• Many pesticides that are never used indoors are tracked into the home and accumulate there at concentrations up to 100 times higher than outdoor levels.(1)

Pesticides are not safe for humans or wildlife.

• According to the National Academy of Sciences, concern about children’s exposure to pesticides is valid because “exposure to neurotoxic compounds at levels believed to be safe for adults could result in permanent loss of brain function if it occurred during the prenatal and early childhood period of brain development.”(2)
• Fetal deaths are linked to exposure to pesticides during the most sensitive period of fetal growth, from the third to the eight week of pregnancy. This is the time period when major organ systems are forming. Mothers living within a few miles of agricultural pesticide use are vulnerable.(3)
• The alligators of Lake Apopka, a few miles from Disney World in Central Florida, are suspected of suffering from pesticide exposure: while alligators once flourished in the lake, recently their numbers have plummeted, to 10 percent of their 1980 numbers; many alligators float to the lake’s surface and wash ashore; and more, more than half of the lake’s young male alligators have severely shrunken penises.(4)
• Atlantic Salmon are now virtually extinct in most of their original range in New England and eastern Canada. The impact is from a compound, nonylphenol, used as an “inert” surfactant in a pesticide.(5)