More than 120 groups today urged Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan to put commonsense safeguards in place to better protect Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, as well as low-wealth communities, from disproportionate harm from pesticides.
The groups asking Regan to use his authority to fast-track stronger protections from pesticides include public health, environmental justice, conservation, science, farmworker, grassroots community-based, farmer and racial justice organizations.
A peer-reviewed study published today in the academic journal BMC Public Health finds that Black, Indigenous and people of color, along with low-income communities, shoulder an outsized burden of the harms caused by pesticides in the United States.
The study, Pesticides and Environmental Injustice in the USA: Root Causes, Current Regulatory Reinforcement and a Path Forward, is the first-ever comprehensive assessment of U.S. disparities in pesticide protections and oversight. It found widespread evidence of greater exposure and harm in communities of color and low-income communities in both residential and workplace settings.