While some pesticide activists celebrated the long awaited launch, they also said SprayDays only shows some of the most harmful pesticides and excludes many others such as RoundUp. They also said they want to know the exact location of pesticide use, rather than the 1-square-mile blocks on the website’s map.

Still, many local activists took it as a win.

“I think it’s going to benefit lots of the families who live near the fields,” said 18-year-old Rocio Ortiz, a co-founder of the Watsonville-based pesticide and environmental justice group Future Leaders of Change. Ortiz and her family have worked in the fields, and she said she was happy to see SprayDays launch after years of activism. 

“It just really got me motivated to continue going to the meetings because I saw how pesticides affected my family. I saw my dad being rushed to the hospital, and my little sister born with asthma, my mom having a miscarriage,” Ortiz said Tuesday.

Former Greenfield City Council member and Safe Ag Safe Schools advocate Yanely Martinez also celebrated the launch of SprayDays, but said the system isn’t perfect — in part because it only includes information about “restricted” pesticides. Those pesticides require growers to give notice to their county agricultural commissioner before using them, and SprayDays compiles that information.

Hundreds of pesticides are used in California, and “we’re only going to get a little percentage of that” in the notifications, Martinez said. 

Martinez said one of her children has asthma and nearly died during an asthma attack when he was 10 years old. Several pesticides had been applied to fields near his school in Greenfield that day, including ones that are known to trigger asthma attacks, she said. None of the pesticides from that day would be included in the SprayDays alerts, Martinez said.

Ahead of the launch of SprayDays, many growers and pesticide companies said that too many notifications would unnecessarily alarm the public.

“Notifying the public of chemicals nearby should be reserved for circumstances of appreciable health concern,” wrote Mike Stanghellini, chief science officer for TriCal Group, in a comment to the California Department of Pesticide Regulation. TriCal is a Gilroy-based multinational pesticide company that specializes in soil fumigation. 

“It’s on us whether we want to pay attention to it or not,” Martinez said. “Their job is just basically to provide that basic information to us.” 

Visit SprayDays.cdpr.ca.gov to view a map and enter an address. A planned application of the fumigant 1,3-dichloropropene near Wilder Ranch State Park is in this March 27 example. (California Department of Pesticide Regulation)

How to get alerts and take precautions

SprayDays has an online map and an option to sign up for text and email notifications.

Residents can submit addresses on the SprayDays site to get notices about pesticide use near those addresses. If an address falls in the same square as a planned application, participants receive a text message or email one or two days in advance. Users can sign up to track up to 10 addresses. 

When pesticides are applied nearby, state regulators said residents can:

• Keep doors and windows closed.
• Take kids’ toys indoors, and wash toys that are left out.
• Take clothes indoors that are hanging outside.
• Use a doormat and leave shoes at the door.
• Use an air filter.
• Take other precautions.

Martinez said she plans to check which pesticides will be used and look up whether they are known to affect people with asthma. 

“So, if that pesticide says it’s going to instigate an asthma attack, my son doesn’t go out that day,” Martinez said. “I close the window, I don’t hang clothes outside, I don’t take my pets for walks, I don’t take my elderly dad for walks.”

A farm’s hoop houses are seen behind Amesti Elementary School in Watsonville. The school is one of several in the Watsonville area that are bordered by agricultural fields. (Nik Altenberg — Santa Cruz Local)

School notices

The new notification program comes on the heels of a state law that since 2018 has required public schools to be notified of planned uses of certain pesticides within a quarter-mile of the school. In Pajaro Valley Unified School District, parents can sign up to be notified of the planned applications, and the district sends that information out as it receives it. 

The district has not yet determined how to utilize the new notification system, but takes the health and safety of its students as a top priority, said district spokesperson Alicia Jimenez.

In Watsonville and North Monterey County, several schools are bordered by fields that use pesticides like the fumigant 1,3-dichloropropene, which is a probable cause of cancer according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

State law also prohibits some pesticides within a quarter-mile of a public school during school hours. Local pesticide activists have said the quarter-mile buffer is not enough because injected fumigants turn into gas and can drift in the wind for miles. 

State regulations require that a special tarp covers the soil when fumigants are used to prevent the gases from escaping, but wind can disturb the tarps and release the hazardous fumes. 

Strawberries are tarped at a field in Watsonville in March. (Nik Altenberg — Santa Cruz Local)

Health at MacQuiddy Elementary 

Mary Gaukel Forster was principal of T.S. MacQuiddy Elementary School at 330 Martinelli St. in Watsonville for three years in the 1990s. She teared up while recalling three MacQuiddy teachers that died of cancer. She said one teacher died while she was principal and the other two died shortly after she left the job.

“When the first one developed cancer and passed away — just this vibrant, beloved teacher, a third grade teacher — there was a sense of loss and grief,” Gaukel Forster said. But when it kept happening to other teachers, “there was, it’s almost hard to describe, there’s a sense of sadness, there’s a sense of powerlessness. A sense of fear as to, who will this strike next?”

She said the principal who took over after her also died of cancer, and over the years she has heard of several other MacQuiddy colleagues who also developed cancer. 

Gaukel Forster said she was glad that a notification system now exists and is easily accessible. When she worked at MacQuiddy, there was little opportunity to take precautions.

“We would show up on a Monday and see the fields covered with plastic. There was no notice for anyone at all, whether it was safe or not safe, or when it was going to happen. There was no choice to it,” Gaukel Forster said. “As educators we needed to show up for children. The children needed to show up for school.”

Pesticides did not necessarily cause those illnesses and deaths, but many activists point to the precautionary principle.

“The science is clear that pesticides are linked to cancer, they’re linked to Parkinson’s, they’re linked to respiratory illnesses like asthma,” said Katie Bolin, a Santa Cruz County public health nurse and member of Safe Ag Safe Schools, at a Jan. 16 hearing on proposed pesticide regulations in Salinas.

“The precautionary principle just says that if we don’t know the sure effects of something — you don’t use it until you know,” Bolin said.

Santa Cruz Local reached out to several local growers for comments. Driscoll’s Inc. representative Emily Nauseda said the SprayDays website increases transparency.

“The use of pesticides is highly regulated by several agencies,” Nauseda wrote. 

One of the largest berry growers in the world, Driscoll’s has grown berries in Pajaro Valley since 1865.

“Driscoll’s requires all our independent growers to comply with the registration and notification policies of all the agencies,” Nauseda wrote.

This story was published with the assistance of the Journalism & Women Symposium (JAWS) Health Journalism Fellowship, supported by The Commonwealth Fund.

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