California Announces Pesticide Restrictions

California took a step toward banning the pesticide chlorpyrifos (klohr-peer’-uh-fohs). The move comes in spite of a Trump administration effort to turn back the Obama-era effort to ban the chemical. The state’s Environmental Protection Agency says farmers and other users will be asked to increase the buffer zones between the fields where they spray the chemical and inhabited areas like residential areas and school zones. The L.A. Times says the agency will move ahead with plans to ban the chemical as a known hazard to humans under Proposition 65. California growers used more than one million pounds of the chemical in 2015 on more than 60 crops, including almonds, grapes, walnuts, oranges, and cotton. The California Department of Pesticide Regulation says the overall use of the chemical has dropped by half between 2005 and 2015. Environmental activists say California is still moving too slowly on the issue. Paul Towers, a spokesman for the Pesticide Action Network of North America, says the agency is actually issuing voluntary guidelines instead of new rules regarding pesticide application. Towers also says the state’s EPA scientists aren’t focusing on the chemical’s effects on children’s brains.