Pesticide campaigners in New York have won
a Pesticide Registry Law that will track the sale and use of pesticides in a
right-to-know database. This law provides valuable information that will help
campaigners such as 1 in 9, a US breast cancer prevention coalition.
Commercial applicators, such as lawn care companies,
fumigators and crops dusters (aerial applicators), will report to the State the
pesticides that they have used during the previous year. The resulting
computerised data allow the public to obtain the type, quantity and location of
pesticides used down to the five-digit post code. Health researchers will be
able to obtain pesticide application data by the nine-digit post code.
The law also improves monitoring for pesticide pollution in
groundwater and provides a voluntary tax check-off to fund breast cancer
research and education. An annual report, containing pesticides used in every
five-digit post code area in New York state, will be published in July 1998.
Working Notes on Community Right-to-Know,
November/December 1996.
[This
article first appeared in Pesticides News No. 35,
March 1997, page 19]