Cookies help us run our site more efficiently.

By clicking “Accept”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts. View our Privacy Policy for more information or to customize your cookie preferences.

Accept Deny

GoGreenNation news

New analysis warns of pesticide residues on some fruits and veggies

News Feed
Friday, April 19, 2024

This story was originally published in The New Lede, a journalism project of the Environmental Working Group, and is republished here with permission.Several types of fruits and vegetables generally considered to be healthy can contain levels of pesticide residues potentially unsafe for consumption, according to an analysis conducted by Consumer Reports (CR) released on Thursday.The report, which is based on seven years of data gathered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) as part of its annual pesticide residue reporting program, concluded that 20% of 59 different fruit and vegetable categories included in the analysis carried residue levels that posed “significant risks” to consumers of those foods.Those high-risk foods included bell peppers, blueberries, green beans, potatoes and strawberries, according to CR. The group found that some green beans even had residues of an insecticide called acephate, which has been banned for use on green beans by U.S. regulators since 2011. In one sample from 2022, levels of methamidophos (a breakdown product of acephate), were morethan 100 times the level CR scientists consider safe. In another sample, acephate levels were 7 times higher than CR considers safe.Overall, out of the nearly 30,000 total fruit and vegetable samples for which CR examined data, about 8% percent were deemed to have residues at “high risk or very high risk”. Imported produce was more likely to carry high levels of pesticide residues than domestically supplied foods, the report said, noting that residue levels can vary widely from sample to sample.The results “raise red flags,” according to CR. The report advises that children and pregnant women should consume less than a serving a day of high-risk fruits and vegetables, and less than half a serving per day of “very high-risk ones.”“People need to be concerned because we see that the more data we gather on pesticides, the more we realize the levels that we previously thought to be safe turn out not to be,” said Michael Hansen, a senior scientist at CR who was recently appointed to a USDA food safety advisory committee.The organization said the “good news” is that the data showed residues in most of the foods sampled, including 16 of 25 fruit categories and 21 of 34 vegetable types, presented “little to worry about.” Nearly all organic samples showed no concerning levels of pesticide residues.The report suggests consumers “try snap peas instead of green beans, cantaloupe in place of watermelon, cabbage or dark green lettuces for kale, and the occasional sweet potato instead of a white one.”Faulty safety assurances  In coming to its findings, CR said it analyzed USDA residue test results for 29,643 individual food samples and then rated the risk of each fruit or vegetable based on how many different pesticides were found in each, how frequently and at what levels the residues were found, and the toxicity for each pesticide detected.For pesticides known to be cancer-causing, neurotoxins or endocrine disruptors – chemicals that can alter the hormonal functions – CR added an extra safety margin requirement to the levels considered safe. “People need to be concerned because we see that the more data we gather on pesticides, the more we realize the levels that we previously thought to be safe turn out not to be." Michael Hansen, Consumer Reports The CR said its safety levels differ from those set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which establishes “maximum residue limits” (MRLs) for each crop use of a pesticide after developing a risk assessment that the agency says considers multiple factors, including aggregate exposure from the pesticides, cumulative effects of related pesticides, and potential increased increased susceptibility to infants and children. Based on the EPA’s MRLs, the USDA said in its most recent pesticide data program report that 99% of foods tested had residues within the safety limits. But the EPA’s limits are too high to be truly protective of public health, and do not adequately account for the risks associated with some pesticides, according to CR.“EPA stands by its comprehensive pesticide assessment and review process to ensure the safety of the U.S. food supply,” the agency said in a statement. “Since the pesticide registration review program started in 2006, EPA has cancelled some or all uses in nearly 25% of the conventional pesticide cases it has completed work on, where new science indicates a need for additional mitigations.” The EPA says it considers “all relevant data” in making human health risk assessments for pesticide use. It is common for many farmers to apply a range of pesticides, including herbicides, insecticides and fungicides, on their fields as a means to fight weeds, bugs and plant diseases. In some cases, they spray the chemicals directly over growing plants. Residues of these chemicals are found not only in food but often in drinking water as well. Both the Food and Drug Administration and the USDA have been tracking levels of pesticide residues in foods for decades, and have repeatedly assured the public that those residues are not a human health risk as long as they do not exceed the EPA’s MRLs. But those assurances have proven wrong in the past. In one example, the government long said the insecticide chlorpyrifos was safe to be used on food if residues were within the EPA’s established limits, despite strong scientific evidence that exposure could harm the brains and nervous systems of developing children.In 2015, after decades of use in agriculture, the EPA changed its stance, saying it could not determine if chlorpyrifos in the diet was actually safe, and proposed banning the pesticide from use in farming. It took until 2021 for the agency to issue a final rule banning the pesticide, and a court challenge to the ban has kept the chemical in use.Further undermining faith in the government’s assurance on pesticide residues is the fact that the EPA consults with the companies selling the chemicals in setting allowable residue levels, and those allowable levels can be increased at the request of the companies. The EPA has approved several increases allowed for residues of the weed killing chemical glyphosate, for instance. Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup herbicides, is classified as a probable human carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer but the EPA considers it not likely to cause cancer.Industry influenceThe Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) requires the EPA to apply an additional tenfold safety margin to allowable exposure levels to account for the effects on vulnerable infants and children, and allows the agency to skip adding the safety margin “only if it will be safe for infants and children.” The agency has declined to apply that additional tenfold margin of safety for infants and children when setting the legal levels for several pesticide residues, however, even when scientists have said it is needed.Pesticide manufacturers have successfully pushed the EPA not to apply the extra safety margin for dozens of pesticides that have “clear potential to damage DNA or disrupt development,” said Chuck Benbrook, a pesticide residue expert and a consultant on the CR report. “EPA has known about the existence of thousands of excessively high tolerances since the 2000s,” said Benbrook. “Despite the powerful new tools and mandate in the FQPA to lower or revoke them, the pesticide industry makes it very difficult for the EPA to lower tolerances and progress has slowed to a crawl. Even worse, some very-high pesticides are finding their way back on the market and into children’s food.”Government and industry assurances about the safety of pesticide residues in the U.S. food supply are based on the fact that most residues in food are below the applicable tolerance levels, Benbrook added.“But we now know, and can specifically identify hundreds of samples of food each year with below-tolerance residues that pose risks far above what the EPA regards as safe,” he said.“Action needs to be taken”The CR report says the dangers lurking on grocery stores shelves could be reduced by the elimination of two chemical classes – organophosphates and carbamates. While organophosphates are used in plastic and solvent manufacturing as well as pesticides, they are also constituents of nerve gas, and exposure – acute and long-term – can have a range of harmful impacts on people and animals. “EPA has known about the existence of thousands of excessively high tolerances since the 2000s." - Charles Benbrook, a pesticide residue expert and Consumer Reports consultant As the Illinois Department of Public Health explains: “Organophosphates kill insects by disrupting their brains and nervous systems. Unfortunately, these chemicals also can harm the brains and nervous systems of animals and humans.”Carbamates bear a chemical similarity to organophosphate pesticides.The CR report comes as many scientists have increasingly been questioning whether or not a steady diet of pesticide residues can actually be safe for people and what long-term consumption of trace amounts of pesticides in food could be doing to human and animal health.“The data is showing more and more that these lower levels are having an impact,” said Hansen. “That is why some action needs to be taken.”

This story was originally published in The New Lede, a journalism project of the Environmental Working Group, and is republished here with permission.Several types of fruits and vegetables generally considered to be healthy can contain levels of pesticide residues potentially unsafe for consumption, according to an analysis conducted by Consumer Reports (CR) released on Thursday.The report, which is based on seven years of data gathered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) as part of its annual pesticide residue reporting program, concluded that 20% of 59 different fruit and vegetable categories included in the analysis carried residue levels that posed “significant risks” to consumers of those foods.Those high-risk foods included bell peppers, blueberries, green beans, potatoes and strawberries, according to CR. The group found that some green beans even had residues of an insecticide called acephate, which has been banned for use on green beans by U.S. regulators since 2011. In one sample from 2022, levels of methamidophos (a breakdown product of acephate), were morethan 100 times the level CR scientists consider safe. In another sample, acephate levels were 7 times higher than CR considers safe.Overall, out of the nearly 30,000 total fruit and vegetable samples for which CR examined data, about 8% percent were deemed to have residues at “high risk or very high risk”. Imported produce was more likely to carry high levels of pesticide residues than domestically supplied foods, the report said, noting that residue levels can vary widely from sample to sample.The results “raise red flags,” according to CR. The report advises that children and pregnant women should consume less than a serving a day of high-risk fruits and vegetables, and less than half a serving per day of “very high-risk ones.”“People need to be concerned because we see that the more data we gather on pesticides, the more we realize the levels that we previously thought to be safe turn out not to be,” said Michael Hansen, a senior scientist at CR who was recently appointed to a USDA food safety advisory committee.The organization said the “good news” is that the data showed residues in most of the foods sampled, including 16 of 25 fruit categories and 21 of 34 vegetable types, presented “little to worry about.” Nearly all organic samples showed no concerning levels of pesticide residues.The report suggests consumers “try snap peas instead of green beans, cantaloupe in place of watermelon, cabbage or dark green lettuces for kale, and the occasional sweet potato instead of a white one.”Faulty safety assurances  In coming to its findings, CR said it analyzed USDA residue test results for 29,643 individual food samples and then rated the risk of each fruit or vegetable based on how many different pesticides were found in each, how frequently and at what levels the residues were found, and the toxicity for each pesticide detected.For pesticides known to be cancer-causing, neurotoxins or endocrine disruptors – chemicals that can alter the hormonal functions – CR added an extra safety margin requirement to the levels considered safe. “People need to be concerned because we see that the more data we gather on pesticides, the more we realize the levels that we previously thought to be safe turn out not to be." Michael Hansen, Consumer Reports The CR said its safety levels differ from those set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which establishes “maximum residue limits” (MRLs) for each crop use of a pesticide after developing a risk assessment that the agency says considers multiple factors, including aggregate exposure from the pesticides, cumulative effects of related pesticides, and potential increased increased susceptibility to infants and children. Based on the EPA’s MRLs, the USDA said in its most recent pesticide data program report that 99% of foods tested had residues within the safety limits. But the EPA’s limits are too high to be truly protective of public health, and do not adequately account for the risks associated with some pesticides, according to CR.“EPA stands by its comprehensive pesticide assessment and review process to ensure the safety of the U.S. food supply,” the agency said in a statement. “Since the pesticide registration review program started in 2006, EPA has cancelled some or all uses in nearly 25% of the conventional pesticide cases it has completed work on, where new science indicates a need for additional mitigations.” The EPA says it considers “all relevant data” in making human health risk assessments for pesticide use. It is common for many farmers to apply a range of pesticides, including herbicides, insecticides and fungicides, on their fields as a means to fight weeds, bugs and plant diseases. In some cases, they spray the chemicals directly over growing plants. Residues of these chemicals are found not only in food but often in drinking water as well. Both the Food and Drug Administration and the USDA have been tracking levels of pesticide residues in foods for decades, and have repeatedly assured the public that those residues are not a human health risk as long as they do not exceed the EPA’s MRLs. But those assurances have proven wrong in the past. In one example, the government long said the insecticide chlorpyrifos was safe to be used on food if residues were within the EPA’s established limits, despite strong scientific evidence that exposure could harm the brains and nervous systems of developing children.In 2015, after decades of use in agriculture, the EPA changed its stance, saying it could not determine if chlorpyrifos in the diet was actually safe, and proposed banning the pesticide from use in farming. It took until 2021 for the agency to issue a final rule banning the pesticide, and a court challenge to the ban has kept the chemical in use.Further undermining faith in the government’s assurance on pesticide residues is the fact that the EPA consults with the companies selling the chemicals in setting allowable residue levels, and those allowable levels can be increased at the request of the companies. The EPA has approved several increases allowed for residues of the weed killing chemical glyphosate, for instance. Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup herbicides, is classified as a probable human carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer but the EPA considers it not likely to cause cancer.Industry influenceThe Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) requires the EPA to apply an additional tenfold safety margin to allowable exposure levels to account for the effects on vulnerable infants and children, and allows the agency to skip adding the safety margin “only if it will be safe for infants and children.” The agency has declined to apply that additional tenfold margin of safety for infants and children when setting the legal levels for several pesticide residues, however, even when scientists have said it is needed.Pesticide manufacturers have successfully pushed the EPA not to apply the extra safety margin for dozens of pesticides that have “clear potential to damage DNA or disrupt development,” said Chuck Benbrook, a pesticide residue expert and a consultant on the CR report. “EPA has known about the existence of thousands of excessively high tolerances since the 2000s,” said Benbrook. “Despite the powerful new tools and mandate in the FQPA to lower or revoke them, the pesticide industry makes it very difficult for the EPA to lower tolerances and progress has slowed to a crawl. Even worse, some very-high pesticides are finding their way back on the market and into children’s food.”Government and industry assurances about the safety of pesticide residues in the U.S. food supply are based on the fact that most residues in food are below the applicable tolerance levels, Benbrook added.“But we now know, and can specifically identify hundreds of samples of food each year with below-tolerance residues that pose risks far above what the EPA regards as safe,” he said.“Action needs to be taken”The CR report says the dangers lurking on grocery stores shelves could be reduced by the elimination of two chemical classes – organophosphates and carbamates. While organophosphates are used in plastic and solvent manufacturing as well as pesticides, they are also constituents of nerve gas, and exposure – acute and long-term – can have a range of harmful impacts on people and animals. “EPA has known about the existence of thousands of excessively high tolerances since the 2000s." - Charles Benbrook, a pesticide residue expert and Consumer Reports consultant As the Illinois Department of Public Health explains: “Organophosphates kill insects by disrupting their brains and nervous systems. Unfortunately, these chemicals also can harm the brains and nervous systems of animals and humans.”Carbamates bear a chemical similarity to organophosphate pesticides.The CR report comes as many scientists have increasingly been questioning whether or not a steady diet of pesticide residues can actually be safe for people and what long-term consumption of trace amounts of pesticides in food could be doing to human and animal health.“The data is showing more and more that these lower levels are having an impact,” said Hansen. “That is why some action needs to be taken.”



This story was originally published in The New Lede, a journalism project of the Environmental Working Group, and is republished here with permission.

Several types of fruits and vegetables generally considered to be healthy can contain levels of pesticide residues potentially unsafe for consumption, according to an analysis conducted by Consumer Reports (CR) released on Thursday.

The report, which is based on seven years of data gathered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) as part of its annual pesticide residue reporting program, concluded that 20% of 59 different fruit and vegetable categories included in the analysis carried residue levels that posed “significant risks” to consumers of those foods.

Those high-risk foods included bell peppers, blueberries, green beans, potatoes and strawberries, according to CR. The group found that some green beans even had residues of an insecticide called acephate, which has been banned for use on green beans by U.S. regulators since 2011. In one sample from 2022, levels of methamidophos (a breakdown product of acephate), were more
than 100 times the level CR scientists consider safe. In another sample, acephate levels were 7 times higher than CR considers safe.

Overall, out of the nearly 30,000 total fruit and vegetable samples for which CR examined data, about 8% percent were deemed to have residues at “high risk or very high risk”. Imported produce was more likely to carry high levels of pesticide residues than domestically supplied foods, the report said, noting that residue levels can vary widely from sample to sample.

The results “raise red flags,” according to CR. The report advises that children and pregnant women should consume less than a serving a day of high-risk fruits and vegetables, and less than half a serving per day of “very high-risk ones.”

“People need to be concerned because we see that the more data we gather on pesticides, the more we realize the levels that we previously thought to be safe turn out not to be,” said Michael Hansen, a senior scientist at CR who was recently appointed to a USDA food safety advisory committee.

The organization said the “good news” is that the data showed residues in most of the foods sampled, including 16 of 25 fruit categories and 21 of 34 vegetable types, presented “little to worry about.” Nearly all organic samples showed no concerning levels of pesticide residues.

The report suggests consumers “try snap peas instead of green beans, cantaloupe in place of watermelon, cabbage or dark green lettuces for kale, and the occasional sweet potato instead of a white one.”

Faulty safety assurances  


In coming to its findings, CR said it analyzed USDA residue test results for 29,643 individual food samples and then rated the risk of each fruit or vegetable based on how many different pesticides were found in each, how frequently and at what levels the residues were found, and the toxicity for each pesticide detected.

For pesticides known to be cancer-causing, neurotoxins or endocrine disruptors – chemicals that can alter the hormonal functions – CR added an extra safety margin requirement to the levels considered safe.

“People need to be concerned because we see that the more data we gather on pesticides, the more we realize the levels that we previously thought to be safe turn out not to be." Michael Hansen, Consumer Reports

The CR said its safety levels differ from those set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which establishes “maximum residue limits” (MRLs) for each crop use of a pesticide after developing a risk assessment that the agency says considers multiple factors, including aggregate exposure from the pesticides, cumulative effects of related pesticides, and potential increased increased susceptibility to infants and children.

Based on the EPA’s MRLs, the USDA said in its most recent pesticide data program report that 99% of foods tested had residues within the safety limits. But the EPA’s limits are too high to be truly protective of public health, and do not adequately account for the risks associated with some pesticides, according to CR.

“EPA stands by its comprehensive pesticide assessment and review process to ensure the safety of the U.S. food supply,” the agency said in a statement. “Since the pesticide registration review program started in 2006, EPA has cancelled some or all uses in nearly 25% of the conventional pesticide cases it has completed work on, where new science indicates a need for additional mitigations.” The EPA says it considers “all relevant data” in making human health risk assessments for pesticide use.

It is common for many farmers to apply a range of pesticides, including herbicides, insecticides and fungicides, on their fields as a means to fight weeds, bugs and plant diseases. In some cases, they spray the chemicals directly over growing plants. Residues of these chemicals are found not only in food but often in drinking water as well.

Both the Food and Drug Administration and the USDA have been tracking levels of pesticide residues in foods for decades, and have repeatedly assured the public that those residues are not a human health risk as long as they do not exceed the EPA’s MRLs.

But those assurances have proven wrong in the past. In one example, the government long said the insecticide chlorpyrifos was safe to be used on food if residues were within the EPA’s established limits, despite strong scientific evidence that exposure could harm the brains and nervous systems of developing children.

In 2015, after decades of use in agriculture, the EPA changed its stance, saying it could not determine if chlorpyrifos in the diet was actually safe, and proposed banning the pesticide from use in farming. It took until 2021 for the agency to issue a final rule banning the pesticide, and a court challenge to the ban has kept the chemical in use.

Further undermining faith in the government’s assurance on pesticide residues is the fact that the EPA consults with the companies selling the chemicals in setting allowable residue levels, and those allowable levels can be increased at the request of the companies.

The EPA has approved several increases allowed for residues of the weed killing chemical glyphosate, for instance. Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup herbicides, is classified as a probable human carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer but the EPA considers it not likely to cause cancer.

Industry influence


The Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) requires the EPA to apply an additional tenfold safety margin to allowable exposure levels to account for the effects on vulnerable infants and children, and allows the agency to skip adding the safety margin “only if it will be safe for infants and children.” The agency has declined to apply that additional tenfold margin of safety for infants and children when setting the legal levels for several pesticide residues, however, even when scientists have said it is needed.

Pesticide manufacturers have successfully pushed the EPA not to apply the extra safety margin for dozens of pesticides that have “clear potential to damage DNA or disrupt development,” said Chuck Benbrook, a pesticide residue expert and a consultant on the CR report.

“EPA has known about the existence of thousands of excessively high tolerances since the 2000s,” said Benbrook. “Despite the powerful new tools and mandate in the FQPA to lower or revoke them, the pesticide industry makes it very difficult for the EPA to lower tolerances and progress has slowed to a crawl. Even worse, some very-high pesticides are finding their way back on the market and into children’s food.”

Government and industry assurances about the safety of pesticide residues in the U.S. food supply are based on the fact that most residues in food are below the applicable tolerance levels, Benbrook added.

“But we now know, and can specifically identify hundreds of samples of food each year with below-tolerance residues that pose risks far above what the EPA regards as safe,” he said.

“Action needs to be taken”


The CR report says the dangers lurking on grocery stores shelves could be reduced by the elimination of two chemical classes – organophosphates and carbamates. While organophosphates are used in plastic and solvent manufacturing as well as pesticides, they are also constituents of nerve gas, and exposure – acute and long-term – can have a range of harmful impacts on people and animals.

“EPA has known about the existence of thousands of excessively high tolerances since the 2000s." - Charles Benbrook, a pesticide residue expert and Consumer Reports consultant

As the Illinois Department of Public Health explains: “Organophosphates kill insects by disrupting their brains and nervous systems. Unfortunately, these chemicals also can harm the brains and nervous systems of animals and humans.”

Carbamates bear a chemical similarity to organophosphate pesticides.

The CR report comes as many scientists have increasingly been questioning whether or not a steady diet of pesticide residues can actually be safe for people and what long-term consumption of trace amounts of pesticides in food could be doing to human and animal health.

“The data is showing more and more that these lower levels are having an impact,” said Hansen. “That is why some action needs to be taken.”

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

Related News

A Deep Look Into the Wild and Not-So-Wild World of Bumblebees

Over the past several decades the lives of the domesticated and native pollinators have increasingly overlapped

A Deep Look Into the Wild and Not-So-Wild World of Bumblebees Over the past several decades the lives of the domesticated and native pollinators have increasingly overlapped Jude Isabella, bioGraphic September 17, 2025 8:00 a.m. The domestication of some species of bumblebee has had unintended consequences. Grant Callegari / Hakai Institute Bumblebees are lovable, adorable and admirably occupied. They tumble along like toddlers drunk on the sweet smells of pretty flowers, breathing in one, then another and another. If Winnie-the-Pooh were an insect, he would be a bumblebee—a fuzzy, chubby, stinging insect that rarely stings. But I had no idea how much I cared about bumblebees until I had trouble meeting one particular species: the western bumblebee, Bombus occidentalis. Even before that, during the Covid-19 pandemic when my physical world contracted, a different apian wonder lured me into the big world of bumblebees. I had a garden, thankfully, and while working remotely, I had more time to consider its denizens. Cute and rotund, the bumblebees that routinely buzzed my tomato blossoms were small delights at a time when the world felt particularly grim. I snapped a photo of one, uploaded it to a website devoted to bumblebee identification and discovered it was a native species called Bombus vosnesenskii, the yellow-faced bumblebee. A sunny-blond mask covers its face and spreads across what I think of as its shoulders, like a fur wrap. Another strip of yellow near its tail contrasts with its otherwise black body. Enchanted, I dug deeper into online sources about bees, and B. vosnesenskii led me to B. occidentalis—also known as the white-bottomed or white-tailed bumblebee—the species that would have been pollinating my tomatoes in Victoria, British Columbia, some 30 years ago. Since then, B. occidentalis has slipped from being the most common bumblebee species in western North America to noticeably uncommon. In some areas, its populations are down 90 percent from what they were historically. The story of B. vosnesenskii has the opposite trajectory. In 1996, entomologists in British Columbia thought the bumblebee was in need of threatened or endangered status in the province. By 2000—not long after B. occidentalis populations crashed—researchers documented a dramatic B. vosnesenskii range expansion in the province, especially in the Lower Mainland and on Vancouver Island. Bombus vosnesenskii—the yellow-faced bumblebee—has expanded its range in British Columbia in the past couple of decades. Julia Hiebaum / Alamy Stock Photo Sure enough, everywhere I looked in my small pandemic bubble—in the garden, in urban parks, along the seashore—I saw B. vosnesenskii and other natives, but no B. occidentalis. I became fixated with the bee and its plight as an augur for an impoverished world. In a sense, my quest felt like an apology to the bee for my previous inattention. As I ventured deeper into B. occidentalis territory, I realized how dramatically the spheres of wild and lab-born bees have collided over the past few decades. The reality for B. occidentalis and many of its brethren is anything but cute. From a distance, Sarah Johnson’s hair looks like a floral bouquet. Standing still in a sea of beach grass infused with introduced Queen Anne’s lace, the bee biologist’s streaks of chartreuse, mauve, azure and garnet shine bright against the pearly blossoms bumblebees busily devour. We’re on a bumblebee safari in Bella Coola, a small town nestled along an inlet on the British Columbia coast. Johnson traveled here on a road trip with her dad in 2019. At the time, Johnson, who had become an incurable bee stalker while studying biology as an undergrad, was a graduate student at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, researching how wildfire affects bumblebee communities. Beside Bella Coola’s ferry terminal, she spotted B. occidentalis on goldenrod. “Every single flower had a bumblebee,” she recalls, and not just any bee; it was B. occidentalis, which had become rare across much of its range in the province by then. “I was starting to freak out—‘Wow, this is amazing!’—so we drove around, and they were everywhere. There were tons of them. It was a time warp into the past,” Johnson recalls. “This is what their populations would have looked like.” Sarah Johnson, a bee biologist, looks for Bombus occidentalis—the western bumblebee—in an estuary in Bella Coola, British Columbia, where she first chanced upon a population in 2019. Grant Callegari / Hakai Institute I reached out to Johnson after grazing the internet looking for B. occidentalis sightings, and she offered to meet me here, five years after her last visit, hoping the site was still abuzz. On this June day in 2024, the temperature is 61 degrees Fahrenheit—a little chilly, but the fuzz that covers bumblebees acts like a jacket, so they’re often the first pollinators on the scene in spring and the last to exit in fall, when it’s too cold for many other pollen gatherers. The smell on the breeze is botanical, with a hint of licorice and the sweet sap of cottonwood trees lining the shoreline. “There’s an occidentalis!” Johnson says as she points to one clambering over a blossom among the ivory floral canopy. “Two more! And another.” She smiles and sighs. We watch the bumblebees forage. With the combs and brushes on the inside of their legs, they stuff pollen into bristly baskets on their hind legs. A bit of nectar mixed with saliva keeps the pollen moist and sticky so it stays put—all of the million or so golden grains in each basket. This site, a beach, does not fit the established understanding of ideal bumblebee habitat: It’s wet, and the flowers are sparse. But the known world of wild bumblebees is like a 2,000-year-old map: devoid of details and hopelessly myopic. B. occidentalis, it seems, like this location just fine. When Johnson, founding president of the Native Bee Society of British Columbia, stumbled upon this B. occidentalis hot spot, she was well aware that the species was on a downward spiral. She, like other bee biologists, suspected disease was to blame. So soon after she first spotted the bees in 2019, she gathered a handful of B. occidentalis, along with specimens of another native, Bombus vancouverensis—also called the Vancouver bumblebee—that were buzzing around Bella Coola, and she brought them back to her lab. Peering through a microscope, Johnson sliced into their abdomens and peeled back their insides to assess their disease load, something she would do when running a bumblebee recovery program for a nonprofit conservation organization in Ontario in the mid-2010s. Under the light of the microscope, B. occidentalis glowed with spores of Vairimorpha bombi—a fungus implicated in the great bumblebee die-off in the 1990s and originally known as Nosema bombi. A known pathogen of bees in general, the fungus seems particularly problematic for B. occidentalis, and researchers suspect that captive-bred bumblebees helped its spread to the wild. The B. vancouverensis she collected had no fungus. Since Johnson’s dissection was a one-off assessment, the scientific takeaway is fuzzy, though it feeds into the general consensus among some bee biologists that B. occidentalis appears more susceptible to agents of disease than most other bumblebee species. Why B. occidentalis in Bella Coola has managed to thrive despite the heavy fungal load is unclear, says Johnson. But it’s likely that the bees have fewer environmental stressors overall undermining their health here. B. occidentalis forages for pollen on Queen Anne’s lace in the Bella Coola estuary. Grant Callegari / Hakai Institute During our visit, Johnson wades through the waist-high flowers, climbing over driftwood and skirting discarded fishing detritus, her camera ready. “So cute,” she murmurs as a bumblebee skitters across an umbrella-shaped cluster of flowers. I feel like I’m on a bumblebee safari, and like all good safari guides, Johnson is happy to dole out facts about the wildlife, with tons of caveats—there are many species, and many of them are under-investigated. Most bumblebees nest underground, moving into abandoned rodent burrows or finding space at the bottom of fence posts or in the roots of trees, she tells me. Those that dwell aboveground tuck themselves behind house shingles, occupy birdhouses or nestle into other nooks they find. Each spring, hibernating queens emerge from their winter homes and disperse to establish their own nests. Eventually, female workers hatch from the queen’s first batch of eggs. The workers survive only a few weeks, toiling to deliver nectar and pollen back to the nest to benefit the next generation. Males, with shaggier, thinner legs, don’t collect pollen; they solely exist to perpetuate the hive, as if they are the ones in red in The Handmaid’s Tale. They mate with the queen late in the season. When the hive dies off, the queen’s end-of-season offspring, her potential successors, hibernate until it’s time to start their own colonies. Johnson shares these bumblebee basics through public outreach tables at farmer’s markets and other events. She also provides expert identification for the database Bumblebee Watch, where amateur enthusiasts can upload pictures of bees they’ve tracked. Public databases allow researchers to track the movements of and make educated guesses about bumblebee populations. Johnson points out that B. vosnesenskii—the yellow-faced bumblebee in my garden—may be continuing its range expansion, perhaps filling the B. occidentalis niche. Yet the story playing out beyond the sightings is a complicated one. It unspools in laboratories where scientists tinker with domesticated pollinators; in greenhouses where lab-born bees are released en masse; and in increasingly simplified agricultural landscapes that favor efficiency over diversity. Until B. occidentalis caught my imagination, I had no idea that bumblebees are akin to valuable livestock and that some species have already been domesticated on a large scale. The more familiar pollinators are non-native honeybees, probably first carried from Europe to North America in 1622 by English colonists of Virginia. Today, honeybees are integral to the food system in North America, though their services vary. In the United States, for example, they pollinate 100 percent of almonds but only about 25 percent of pumpkins. And they’re poor pollinators for one of the most lucrative crops: tomatoes. The tomato business is enormous. Globally, the market value of tomatoes is over $200 billion annually, compared with apples at around $100 billion. Bumblebees are ideal tomato pollinators because they are plump, they are hairy, and they vibrate. Tomatoes need that buzz: The high-frequency vibration of a bumblebee’s thoracic muscles shakes pollen from the plant’s flowers. “To anthropomorphize,” says Jon Koch, who was until recently a research entomologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Utah, “that’s why we benefit, or the world does—because they’re not very good at wiping their mouths. A lot of pollen ends up on their own bodies.” Bumblebees then transfer the pollen grains between blossoms as they dance from plant to plant. Honeybees, by contrast, don’t vibrate, and they struggle to reach the pollen at the end of tomato blossoms. Being inside a greenhouse also tends to disorient honeybees, so they bang against the glass instead of working. Bombus mixtus is a commonly found bumblebee species native to western North America, in the Rocky Mountains to the coast, from Alaska south to northern California. Grant Callegari / Hakai Institute Before they could buy commercial bumblebees in the 1980s, tomato greenhouse growers hand-pollinated with electric vibrating wands. Compared with this laborious task, bumblebee pollination can lead to plumper fruit and a 30 percent increase in tomato yield. In addition to their effect on greenhouse tomatoes, domesticated bumblebees have increased the yields of bell peppers, cucumbers, eggplants and, in some regions, field crops like blueberries, strawberries and cranberries. Worldwide, 5 species of bumblebees out of about 265 are commercial crop pollinators. B. occidentalis was briefly one of them. Bumblebee domestication started more than a century ago, when farmers began moving four bumblebee species, including a species called Bombus terrestris, the buff-tailed bumblebee, from the United Kingdom to New Zealand—once a bumblebee-free land—to pollinate feed crops such as alfalfa and red clover. The effort to raise bumblebees in captivity progressed in fits and starts for much of the 20th century. But the commercial value of B. terrestris soared soon after a Belgian veterinarian and bumblebee breeder named Roland de Jonghe released a colony into a tomato grower’s greenhouse in the Netherlands in 1985. The grower saw his yield increase, and he noticed that his bumblebee-kissed greenhouse tomatoes were also prettier—with rounded flesh and fewer blemishes—than the hand-pollinated fruit of his competitors. He made a record profit. Within a few years, tomato growers in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg all began using B. terrestris for pollination, and de Jonghe launched Biobest, which is now one of the world’s largest suppliers of domesticated B. terrestris and other commercial pollinator species. All along, bumblebee breeders understood that their wards were prone to jailbreaking. As Koch points out, “Bumblebees are great escape artists. I’ve learned that they will find the smallest hole anywhere, and they’re persistent.” For that reason, breeders raising bumblebees for the greenhouse industry endeavored to use species local to where they’d be employed. It didn’t always work. In Australia, for example, breeders tried native great carpenter bees, but they were uncooperative in confined settings. In North America, breeders set their sights on domesticating two bumblebees native to Canada and the U.S.: B. impatiens, the most common bumblebee in the east, and B. occidentalis, the most common bumblebee in the west. The quest to create a pollinator from wild B. impatiens worked; B. occidentalis, however, faltered. In the late 1990s, not long into industrial-scale breeding of B. occidentalis, the V. bombi fungus felled commercial populations. Wild B. occidentalis soon fell ill as well, possibly infected by some of the domesticated variety released into greenhouses and farm fields. If hysteria ensued—as it did when colony collapse disorder first struck honeybees in 2006—it seemed to be kept within the sphere of breeders, researchers, trade publications and maybe local farm news. Commercial breeders abandoned B. occidentalis by 1999. “The hothouse tomato industry faced a calamity in terms of productivity,” says Paul van Westendorp, the chief apiarist for the province of British Columbia before his recent retirement. Meanwhile, growers on the other side of the continent, in places like Ontario and New York, were relying on B. impatiens, a proven winner in domestication. Western growers clamored for permission from their governments to import B. impatiens. Promises were made to keep the non-native bees inside, and permission was granted. “We always knew that 100 percent control was perhaps idealistic or unrealistic, but it was considered to be perhaps not a great threat as such,” van Westendorp says. Washington and California also gave permission, with conditions, while Oregon was a holdout. In greenhouses, bumblebee colonies live in a cardboard box about the size of a banker’s box. Inside is a plastic chamber for the hive and where the queen lays her eggs. A round opening, an excluder, to the outside allows smaller workers out, but it should be too small for queens. Did B. impatiens escape greenhouses in western North America? If you ask Gary Jones, program manager for the B.C. Greenhouse Grower’s Association, the evidence is circumstantial. “It’s an assumption,” he says. The assumption is based on surveys by researchers in the spring of 2003 and 2004 of blueberry and strawberry fields in the Lower Mainland, where hundreds of greenhouses dot agricultural fields: They found over 500 B. impatiens, including a queen, at two different sites, roughly one and three miles from greenhouses, typical foraging distances for bumblebees. Commercially produced bumblebees arrive at greenhouses in cardboard boxes that serve as their hives. Carlos Gonzalez / Minneapolis Star Tribune / Alamy Stock Photo Aside from using excluders, growers are also supposed to euthanize hives that have finished their pollinating job, usually by freezing them. Yet there are no rules specifying how long to freeze the hives to kill the bees before disposing of them, says Sheila Colla*, a conservation scientist at York University in Toronto, who led the bee surveys in British Columbia’s blueberry and strawberry fields. And no regulatory agency has anyone methodically inspecting domesticated bumblebees in the province’s commercial greenhouses. Washington and California have no monitoring processes in place either. “I wonder if they’re just being dumped into dumpsters, and that’s how they’re getting out,” says Colla. Katie Buckley with the Washington State Department of Agriculture also knows that some greenhouse growers sold hives to other farmers, who may have placed them outside. That was “not uncommon practice,” she says, referring to the early days of B. impatiens in the West. “There were chains of people that these hives would go through.” No governmental entity checked for escapees. Hunt for bumblebees in farm fields in the Lower Mainland today, and 40 percent will be B. impatiens, as revealed by scientists from the University of British Columbia in 2024, helping fill the void left by B. occidentalis, once the humming majority. While B. impatiens is not responsible for B. occidentalis’ worrisome decline, it may have kept the threatened bee from rebounding in certain areas, through competition or by spreading disease. And even though colonies of native bumblebees—domesticated B. vosnesenskii and another hometown buzz called Bombus huntii—are finally available, it seems unlikely we’ll ever put a lid back on feral B. impatiens. They’ve become a permanent component of the region’s pollinator mix. The question is: What will this now-common species do to wild bee diversity in the long term? By 2017, Washington State firmly jumped on the feral bumblebee worry train when a single image of B. impatiens uploaded to an online insect identification site caught the eye of Chris Looney, who studies insects at the Washington State Department of Agriculture. Looney is famous—at least in some circles—for his work on tracking and eradicating the Asian giant hornet (aka murder hornet, Vespa mandarinia). The photo was taken in Blaine, Washington, roughly half a mile from the Canadian border. “This is only the third location, I would say on Earth, where a bumblebee has been introduced in a place where other bumblebees live,” Looney says over a video chat from his office in Olympia, Washington. Aside from the northwest coast of North America, the other two places are Japan and Chile. In Japan, B. terrestris imported from Europe may be interfering with the mating of native species and competing for nests, but the effects have been subtle so far. In Chile, the effects are profound. Introduced B. terrestris have spread south into Argentina, and now they’re displacing the native ginger-furred Bombus dahlbomii throughout Patagonia, a revelation made in 2013 by Carolina Morales, at Argentina’s National University of Comahue, and her colleagues. B. dahlbomii, the largest bumblebee on Earth—likened to a flying mouse—is the region’s only native bumblebee. Bombus dahlbomii, Patagonia’s only native bumblebee, has struggled since Chile introduced Bombus terrestris into greenhouses in 1997. The largest bumblebee in the world, B. dahlbomii is now considered endangered.  bbr0wn / iNaturalist “In that case, the impacts [in Patagonia] were immediate and obvious,” Looney says. In the Pacific Northwest, the trajectory is less clear. “Will [B. impatiens] just slot in and not really be a competitor? Or will they have disparate impacts on some native bee species but not others? Who knows, right?” Looney and a colleague visited Blaine and immediately found B. impatiens. He then investigated the potential for B. impatiens to spread even further through a modeling study using climate data and habitat needs: The bee has the potential to go big and colonize the coast from British Columbia’s Haida Gwaii archipelago to California’s San Francisco Bay. In 2022, Looney launched a four-year survey. With colleagues, including Koch, who was then at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, he put 46 sites under surveillance for B. impatiens in Washington and in British Columbia’s Lower Mainland. One question the team hopes to answer is whether the bees have a preference for certain landscapes, and if so, which ones. Anecdotally, they’re associated with urban and suburban gardens, parks and agricultural fields, but Looney’s team has also found them on mountains and forested foothills. “Obviously, they found something to eat up there,” he says. He’s also found that the traps he set for the Asian giant hornet, baited with a mimosa-like concoction—rice wine and orange juice—tend to lure B. impatiens. Chris Looney, an entomologist at the Washington State Department of Agriculture, holds a bottle trap used to capture invasive Asian giant hornets. Bombus impatiens are also drawn to the traps.  Paul Christian Gordon / Alamy Stock Photo In October 2022, Looney found 30 of the introduced bumblebees—way more than the usual handful he encounters—inside a hornet trap set in a meadow in Lynden, Washington. Lots of males and queens were flying around, a signal that it was the end of a colony cycle. Another pass at the site in spring 2024 turned up nine B. impatiens nests under the ground. “Big nests,” Looney says—far bigger than those produced by B. occidentalis, which typically contain a few hundred bees. In the fall, he and his team used pickaxes, shovels and a shop vac to collect a colony and bring it back for dissection. Based on the number of larval cells they found—3,600—they estimate that collectively, the nine nests in that meadow habitat could have produced 3,933 gynes, potential queens. About 60 percent survive overwintering, which means that the nests could produce 2,360 would-be queens in spring. The team is far from generating an overall hypothesis about whether the flying infringers are worrisome adversaries or tolerable neighbors for native species. Looney, Koch, Colla and others have noticed that the bee from the east shows up to pollinate later in the season than most natives. The queens are out at the same time as other species’ queens, but the workers take their sweet time heading out to flowering fields—perhaps because they’re reliant on introduced plants, cultivars bred to provide a cascading series of blooms all summer long, or fruits and vegetables ready to harvest at various times over a growing season. From surveys of the Lower Mainland, bee biologists at the University of British Columbia found that B. impatiens binge on the pollen of cultivated dahlias, tomatoes, blueberries and other plants found in suburban gardens. The bee dominates parks in the Vancouver metro area, too. Despite the apparent size of the feral population, the British Columbia government continues to sit on its hands. B. impatiens is no longer welcome in Washington’s greenhouses, though the domesticated eastern worker continues to labor in California. Counties in California inspect greenhouses before issuing permits, yet that state also has a documented feral population. Oregon continues to forbid B. impatiens and so far has no established populations. Bee biologist Lincoln Best at Oregon State University has had teams searching for them since 2018 when he launched the Oregon Bee Atlas. He believes they are dispersing along the coast and into watersheds, finding open areas with decent bumblebee habitat, and that their expansion from either Washington or California into Oregon is probable. “It’s just a matter of time,” he says. On another bumblebee safari, to the Lower Mainland, the apparent gateway of B. impatiens to the West, I meet Sandra Gillespie, a bee biologist with the University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford, British Columbia. Gillespie’s focus is on pathogens and bumblebees, but Looney and Koch asked her to join their survey of B. impatiens. Abbotsford is part farm community, part suburbia. To meet Gillespie, I drive down a two-lane road lined with greenhouses and commercial blueberry crops and crowded with trucks, cars, and the odd tractor. “Oh, here’s an impatiens—she’s moving fast,” Gillespie says as we stand at a blackberry patch in a public park. I blink, and the bee is gone. We’re about a mile from the nearest greenhouse, which means the B. impatiens is either feral or a recent escapee. “Once they built that greenhouse, that’s when I started seeing Bombus impatiens at one of my field sites, over there,” she says, pointing north toward the Fraser River. She’s been monitoring the same sites for eight years and rarely sees a B. occidentalis, although she’s spotted them on Vancouver Island. Sandra Gillespie, a bee biologist at the University of the Fraser Valley in British Columbia, studies pathogens in bumblebees. Toby Hall / Hakai Institute A couple of other native bumblebee species whizz by before we stroll to a patch of native fireweed where bumblebees gulp an abundance of nectar from the bubblegum pink petals. Different plants offer different nutritional value, and research has shown that bumblebees thrive on a varied diet. But the intense commercialization of the blueberry crop in Abbotsford has simplified the landscape with thousands of shrubs. “Blueberries are attractive to bumblebees because there are so many of them,” says Gillespie, noting they don’t offer bees much protein. She equates the vast blueberry fields to big box stores, teeming with processed foods. It’s hot, and the bees are fast. Gillespie points to a couple of B. impatiens flying deep into the flower patch. Then she chuckles: A bumblebee in front of us sticks its face deep into a bright pink blossom. It’s a B. vosnesenskii, the yellow-faced bumblebee that first lured me into the world of bees. Earlier in the season, Gillespie collected a handful of B. vosnesenskii queens from the wild and placed them in a box designed for brood rearing, as a means of learning more about the behaviors of her study subjects. Koch and Looney did the same in a couple of different sites in Washington. Gillespie has had little success so far. “I think there’s something wrong with our queens,” she says, clearly frustrated, noting it could also be the lab setup. For publicly funded researchers and commercial breeders alike, figuring out how to rear bees in labs has been notoriously finnicky since the beginning. Gillespie trains students to identify and net bee pollinators in her survey sites. Toby Hall / Hakai Institute Koppert, a commercial breeding operation based in the Netherlands, began raising B. vosnesenskii around 2007, and early results were mixed—the bee was not easy to domesticate. But eventually the company got it right, and commercial sales began in 2020. What did it get right? Who knows. Production methods are proprietary. “As you can imagine, we compete heavily with the likes of Biobest and other smaller local producers all across the world,” says Martin Wohlfarter, Koppert’s global regulatory affairs specialist. Fair enough: The pollination-services industry was worth $2.5 billion in 2024. B. vosnesenskii could prove as lucrative as B. impatiens—it’s one of the two domesticated bumblebees allowed to pollinate crops in Washington and Oregon, both in fields and greenhouses. If British Columbia ever bans B. impatiens, it is likely that B. vosnesenskii and B. huntii will take their place. But will using domesticated native bumblebees ultimately prove better than using non-native equivalents? Well, domesticated B. vosnesenskii can potentially overwhelm habitat and outcompete other species, but more than one researcher points out that they’ll mostly stick with the “big box” floral department they’re released into. More worrisome is the spread of disease to wild bumblebees if an outbreak of a fungus, virus, parasite or bacteria hits a lab or two. What is known is that since the start of the commercial bumblebee breeding industry, infections caused by V. bombi, the fungus that sliced into B. occidentalis populations, have risen in wild species in western North America. Maybe bumblebees meet at a flower patch, alight on some of the same blossoms, each make their own little messes while sipping nectar and gathering pollen, and a pathogen hitches a ride back to a wild hive. Felix Wäckers, head of research and development at Biobest, based in Belgium, is an ecologist and former academic. He joined Biobest 16 years ago, and at the time, he says, shipping pollinators around the globe was not acknowledged—at least by the industry—as a risk to native bumblebee species. Since then, he says, disease protocols have become more rigorous. For instance, scientists will breed queens for multiple generations to weed out potential pathogens from the original wild progenitors. Biobest has also bred native Japanese and South American bumblebees and has stopped selling B. terrestris to Japan and Chile. “I think as an industry, we have taken considerable steps over the last one and a half decades to minimize the impact,” Wäckers says. “That doesn’t mean that what happened with Chile is not a problem.” It also doesn’t mean other companies have stopped selling the non-native bees to Chile or Japan. Colla, the conservation scientist, and her colleagues are calling for a “bumblebee clean stock certification program” across North America to reduce disease risk in captive production, which in turn would reduce the risk of infections in wild pollinators and other insects. As Colla points out, pathogen spillover is a regular occurrence between livestock and their wild counterparts—between cattle and bison; between farmed salmon and wild salmon; between poultry and wild birds. My final bumblebee safari never pans out. I’m home, sick with a case of dramatic irony, infected with the Covid-19 virus. Looney, Koch and their team head out without me to Whatcom County in Washington to check their B. vosnesenskii colonies. They’re doing well. Koch’s lab manager Tien Lindsay sends me photos. The mid-September day looks ablaze in foliage as the team checks a hive surrounded by the white and red blossoms of rugosa, a lovely flowering shrub from eastern Asia. Against an emerald backdrop of western red cedar striped with the white bark of an aspen, a scientist peers inside a white box. The yellow-faced livestock are hidden from the camera. Unlike conventional livestock, bumblebees play a role in the agricultural system that is mostly hidden from consumers. It’s not intentional, just business: Bumblebees have become invisible in a system where profit comes first, food second and biodiversity barely registers. A handful of bumblebee species are tools, necessary tools for growers big and small, including the family-run greenhouse a couple miles from my house that sells the most exquisite heirloom tomatoes at the summer farmers market. The corporate point of view isn’t wrong. An economy that hinges on one metric—money—rewards profit-driven behavior. But money is like a god that demands complete allegiance, leaving less space for the gods of small things, for the 260 or so other wild bumblebees that do not fit into today’s economic system but are likely impacted by it. This is not the end of the story. Farmers have always been creative problem solvers. Change the goal, and farmers and researchers—highly skilled people—can transform the agricultural landscape into healthier ecosystems with space for all bee species. In fact, domesticating bumblebees led to a boost in biocontrol research, resulting in new ways to manage pests without relying solely on chemicals to massacre other life forms. Maybe change begins with an idea: to look at the world through the eyes of wild pollinators while acknowledging them as partners in our food systems. If we simultaneously reject the simplification of agricultural landscapes, we can create diverse food-producing ecosystems that encourage a variety of species that interact for the benefit of the whole. B. vosnesenskii, a bumblebee native to western North America, rests on Looney’s hand at one of his survey sites in Washington State. Chris Looney Another picture in the batch that Lindsay sends me has a caption: “A Bombus vosnesenskii worker bee rests on Dr. Chris Looney’s finger. We were expressing our gratitude for her efforts and services.” Maybe change starts with that. Travel and photography support for this story came from the Tula Foundation. * Sheila Colla passed away on July 6, 2025. As a journalist, I only knew Sheila through a video interview and emails. She answered questions with clarity, patience and kindness and was always responsive. When we chatted many months ago, she was outside with her students, giving thoughtful answers to my questions, occasionally engaging with someone in the background, smiling all the while. She seemed unflappable. When I interviewed other biologists for this story, they often referred to Sheila’s work. From our brief encounter, Sheila came across as a matriarch of the bee biology world, a powerful, influential woman and scientist who cared deeply about the natural world. Please read about her remarkable sojourn on this corporeal plane here. This story originally appeared in bioGraphic, an independent magazine about nature and regeneration powered by the California Academy of Sciences. Get the latest Science stories in your inbox.

Agriculture
Business
Chemicals

As Federal Support for On-Farm Solar Declines, Is Community Agrivoltaics the Future?

Byron Kominek, who owns the farm, sees similar benefits from the solar panels he has installed on some of the land. “What’s important is to think about the solar array as a tree canopy,” Kominek said. The solar garden includes 3,276 panels that generate 1.2 megawatts of community solar power, enough to power 300 homes. […] The post As Federal Support for On-Farm Solar Declines, Is Community Agrivoltaics the Future? appeared first on Civil Eats.

Some of the thickest hay in the meadow at Jack’s Solar Garden, in Longmont, Colorado, is on the west side under an elm tree. The tree offers shade, absorbs the brunt of afternoon sun, and keeps more moisture in the ground. Byron Kominek, who owns the farm, sees similar benefits from the solar panels he has installed on some of the land. “What’s important is to think about the solar array as a tree canopy,” Kominek said. The solar garden includes 3,276 panels that generate 1.2 megawatts of community solar power, enough to power 300 homes. Through his agrivoltaic system—the dual use of land for solar generation and agriculture—he’s found success growing blackberries, raspberries, asparagus, and more under the panels. While growing these crops, he’s also been able to generate and sell electricity—another boost to farm revenue. With hotter, drier years ahead, Kominek also thinks having additional shade on farmland will be important for reducing ground temperatures and keeping water in the soil. Both will expand the lifespan of his property. Through his agrovoltaic system—the dual use of land for solar generation and agriculture—Byron Kominek can grow crops while generating and selling electricity, a boost to farm revenue. Like most farmers and farm advocates, Kominek is concerned about the loss of productive farmland across the country. He sees large-scale solar energy development that involves wiping out farms entirely as part of that problem, but he believes his farm and many others can demonstrate a different approach. “It takes a little bit more upfront, but one can consider some of the main points around developing solar arrays that can make it safer, more accessible, and useful for farmers and ranchers for the long run,” Kominek said. The Biden administration invested in solar through landmark climate legislation, which included additional funds for on-farm solar projects. State policies have also helped spur agrivoltaic growth. But the Trump administration has taken steps to move federal support away from solar energy. Most recently, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said it would no longer support solar projects that take away viable farmland. That will make it harder for rural businesses and farmers to access grants and loan guarantees that largely go to small-scale solar arrays. In years past, farmers have gravitated toward these awards because of the energy cost benefits that can help sustain their businesses. Increasingly, though, as federal policies become less stable for solar, states and farm groups are looking to community solar projects to fill the gaps. Trump’s Far-Reaching Changes to Rural Energy In August, the USDA shared a press release explaining how the agency would move away from solar through changes to the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP). First created under a different name in the 2002 Farm Bill, REAP has grown to become the primary program in the farm legislation. While other technologies once dominated, energy efficiency and solar projects are now some of the most popular. The program currently supports solar projects that range in scale, funded through grants and loan guarantees for agricultural producers or small rural businesses. Solar arrays can range from small-scale, like task-oriented solar for an irrigation pump, to multi-acre utility-scale projects where electricity generated can go to the grid. It’s also a low-risk, established technology that farmers and small rural businesses have gravitated toward to stabilize energy prices. Company climate pledges and consumer demand are also pushing low-carbon products, which has similarly pushed farmers to solar. “The benefit of solar to agriculture producers is that it provides stable energy cost, predictable energy cost, and helps them to reduce their carbon footprint, as markets increasingly demand,” said Andy Olsen, senior policy advocate at the Environmental Law and Policy Center. “The benefit of solar to agriculture producers is that it provides stable energy cost, predictable energy cost, and helps them to reduce their carbon footprint, as markets increasingly demand.” A recent USDA memo sent to state Rural Development directors and obtained by Civil Eats provides more insights into how the agency plans to move REAP away from solar. Ground-mounted solar projects larger than 50 kilowatts and installed on “certified cropland” are now ineligible for REAP loan guarantees, it says. Any solar projects that have any component made in a foreign adversary country, like China, would also be ineligible. Solar projects that fall under these size, location, and component restrictions will also be “disincentivized” for REAP grants. From 2015 to 2025, 72 percent of REAP projects included solar, according to an analysis by the Environmental Law and Policy Center shared directly with Civil Eats. An estimated 65 percent of these solar projects were larger than 50 kW and could therefore be ineligible for loans, or “docked,” under the new parameters. While available data does not directly include the size of projects, the center’s analysts came to this conclusion by estimating kilowatts by the cost of the project. A separate analysis by the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, also shared with Civil Eats, found that relatively few—only about 150—of these projects are larger than 50 kW, mounted on the ground, and classified as an agriculture project. Many existing REAP projects involve solar arrays mounted on land adjacent to buildings or on the edge of property. But experts point out that nearly every solar array, no matter the size or location, is likely made using components from China. “This is farmers who are saying, ‘I want to go solar to help my farm,’ or, ‘I’m a rural small business and I want to go solar to help my business,’” said Liz Veazey, state policy campaigns director at Solar United Neighbors. “These people are not going to put a bunch of solar in the middle of their farm and impact their farm. They should be able to do whatever they want with their land.” Rural businesses and farms look to REAP and solar as a way to stay in business by lowering or controlling their energy costs, Veazey said. These projects can also create jobs that support the broader local, rural economy. REAP loan guarantees specifically can help support utility-scale solar projects that farmers can use to sell electricity. REAP applications are scored and get “priority points” based on criteria like energy savings, location, committed matching funds and more. These scores are factored into USDA’s selection process. As the internal USDA memo notes, the new restrictions on solar projects will be factored into this point system. But it’s unclear how severely projects involving more than 50 kW, ground-mounted solar, projects on farmland, and systems made with components produced in China will be docked in this new system. Depending on how much projects are docked because of the new solar parameters, it could lead to hundreds fewer systems receiving grants, Veazey said. The USDA is expected to reopen REAP applications on October 1, and she expects more information about the point system to be released then. “Making it harder to get these grants is probably going to reduce applications for solar, [and] potentially push applications to other, maybe less practical technologies,” Veazey said. The new REAP parameters add to a wave of “uncertainty and chaos” in the program, Veazey said. Earlier this year, USDA briefly froze REAP funding and delayed opening the latest cycle of applications. Veazey said she’s also concerned that cuts to agency staff could make it harder to process all the applications. “Making it harder to get these grants is probably going to reduce applications for solar, [and] potentially push applications to other, maybe less practical technologies.” Meanwhile, the federal government has implemented other policies that signal a shift away from solar energy. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) boosted the amount REAP grants could cover to 50 percent. Developers could also stack these grants with other IRA tax credits to further lower the cost of the project. However, under the Republican-backed One Big Beautiful Bill Act, several IRA credits for clean energy were rolled back. Specifically, the residential solar credit will go away at the end of 2025, and the solar credit for businesses that many farmers or rural businesses could have used becomes more complicated with the introduction of “foreign entity of concern” rules that clean energy developers are still seeking formal guidance on. Already, getting a REAP grant entails a competitive but complicated application process, particularly for farmers and rural businesses that may not have technical expertise or support. Adding additional parameters, particularly around foreign components, could add red tape to the application process. The new parameters set by the USDA are “largely killing the REAP program,” said Olsen of the Environmental Law and Policy Center. States Consider Community Solar As the federal policy on solar shifts, some states are increasingly exploring community solar programs that can include farms and rural businesses. Community solar arrays are often funded by private investments and subscriber payments. These are generally smaller, requiring about 50 acres, and usually capped at 5 MW of electrical capacity. So far, 19 states have community solar programs and are exploring agrivoltaics as a way of bringing on low-cost power quickly. This system allows residents and small businesses to get a credit on their electricity bill that could help offset costs. Farmers who implement these projects can also directly see benefits from lower-cost power or selling electricity. So far, 19 states have community solar programs and are exploring ways to enhance agrivoltaics, said Liz Perera, senior director of national programs and policy at Coalition for Community Solar Access (CCSA). These states are trying to bring on low-cost power quickly, and community solar is an economical way of doing this, she continued. “As the cost of power goes up and electricity on these farms goes up, there’s going to be a lot more interest in solar on these farms,” Perera said. “That’s their way of actually dealing with that increased cost.” With community solar projects, farmers can lease land to solar developers, earning dollars from lease payments while still harvesting crops on nearby fields, Perera said. These also bring economic benefits for the entire community. CCSA estimates that 750 mW of community solar nationwide could deliver $2.1 billion in economic impact and create over 14,000 local jobs, based on state-level studies. In Colorado, for example, the community solar program has brought $1.4 billion in private investment while creating jobs largely in rural communities, according to a CCSA report. Creating Opportunities for Agrivoltaic Meanwhile, the types of crops that can be grown in an agrivoltaic system are also expanding with further investment and research. Leafy greens, berries, root vegetables, legumes and more can all be grown under the arrays, Perera said. In September, American Farmland Trust (AFT) announced the Farmers Powering Communities partnership with Reactivate and Edelen Renewables Community Solar. The initiative aims to bring more community-scale solar projects to farmers and rural communities, which AFT believes will protect farmers and farmland while delivering energy savings to rural communities. These projects can also be a mix of agrivoltaics, rooftop solar, and arrays on the edge of farmland. The coalition aims to connect with partners across the country, but is currently focused on New York, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, states that have already have community solar and agrivoltaic programs. Ethan Winter, director of the Smart Solar program at AFT, said these states are more land constrained. “You’re trying to create some opportunity for the next generation of producers, you’re trying to not accelerate farmland loss, and you’ve got some really ambitious energy targets that are going to continue despite the federal policy headwinds,” Winter said. For farmers, one of the key barriers to entering the community solar space is a lack of information about the process, said Joel Tatum, senior solar specialist at AFT. This partnership aims to give farmers the background and research to site projects responsibly. “You’re trying to create some opportunity for the next generation of producers, you’re trying to not accelerate farmland loss, and you’ve got some really ambitious energy targets that are going to continue despite the federal policy headwinds.” Still, agrivoltaics and incorporating community solar into farms is an emerging concept. Even as innovations, farmer interest, and public awareness of solar on farmland grow, consistent support from the federal or state level are necessary. Despite the lagging support at the federal level, many groups remain optimistic that community solar and agrivoltaics will persist. On September 16, community solar developer Lightstar Renewables officially launched its Plains Road Agrivoltaics project in Montgomery, New York. The solar project was tailored to fit within the existing operations at the DiMartino Farm, so hay planting and harvesting can continue around or under the panels. The project is expected to generate enough energy to power 466 homes annually. Previously, county bylaws had banned solar development on prime farmland. But developers and partners on the project were able to amend these bylaws with specific height restrictions and lot coverage, allowing for agrivoltaics, said Lucy Bullock-Sieger, chief strategy officer at Lightstar. This shift is happening in other parts of the country as well, as more examples of agrivoltaics show their benefit to farms and communities, she said. “Agrivoltaics is going to be even more important because the conversation over prime farmland is not going away,” she said. “We have this opportunity to make sure that people understand that agrivoltaics is a viable, commercial, and scalable option for farmers.” The post As Federal Support for On-Farm Solar Declines, Is Community Agrivoltaics the Future? appeared first on Civil Eats.

Agriculture
Business
Climate

Chesapeake Bay’s oysters make a steady comeback

The Maryland mollusks have survived decades of overharvesting, disease and drought.

For the fifth year in a row, the oyster population in the Chesapeake Bay is doing well after decades of combating drought, disease, loss of habitat and overharvesting.The Maryland Department of Natural Resources said in March that its annual fall oyster survey showed that the “spatfall intensity index” — a measure of how well oysters reproduced and their potential population growth — again hit above a 40-year median.“We seem to be making some headway,” said Lynn Waller Fegley, director of fishing and boating services for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. “With the work we’ve done to help restore oysters, and combined with the fact that we’ve been gifted with some really favorable environmental conditions, we’ve seen the oyster population trend upward.”Oyster-processing companies, oystermen, conservation groups and local fish and wildlife departments in the region have spent years trying to boost the population of oysters, which serve an important role as “filter feeders,” sifting sediment and pollutants such as nitrogen out of the water.The cleaner water in turn spurs underwater grasses to grow, while oyster reefs create habitats for fish, crabs and dozens of other species. Adult oysters can filter up to two gallons of water per hour, making them the bay’s “most effective water filtration system,” according to experts at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, a nonprofit organization that advocates for the health of the bay.Oysters thrive in brackish water — a mix of saltwater and freshwater. They attach and grow on hard surfaces such as rocks, piers or old shells. Too much rain lowers the salinity, while drought makes water too salty. Both situations can create conditions in which oysters can become vulnerable to disease or unable to reproduce as well.Before the 1880s, the oyster population was so healthy it could filter in a week a volume of water equal to that of the entire bay — about 19 trillion gallons — according to the bay foundation. But now it would take the vastly smaller oyster population more than a year to do the same amount.This fall, biologists in Maryland collected more than 300 oyster samples from the bay and tributaries, including the Potomac River, for their annual survey. The results were promising, experts said, given that 2023 was an unusual year for oysters because drought conditions raised the salinity in the bay.There are several other encouraging signs, experts said. The mortality rate of oysters has stabilized, their “biomass index,” which shows how oyster populations are doing over time, has been increasing for the past 14 years, and an analysis of their habitat showed continued improvements.“They’ve been hit by a pretty severe drought, then got pretty decimated by disease,” Fegley said. “They’ve been cycling back, and we’re now in a state of grace.”Another sign oysters are doing better is their “spat sets” — the process of the tiny larvae (spat) attaching to a hard surface so they can grow into mature oysters. A high number of spat equals successful reproduction. A low number means there are fewer young oysters that will grow into adults.Fegley said last year, the bay’s oysters had “epic, generational spat sets.”“Not only were there a lot of young oysters, which is a good sign of health, but they were distributed through the bay in a way that we had not seen in many years where they were farther up tributaries,” Fegley said. “We’ve had years where the conditions in the bay were just right — with a good balance of salinity levels, no disease and good reproduction.”The success of oysters is also due in part to Maryland and Virginia working over the past few years to build more oyster reefs along the bottom of the bay so oysters could grow successfully, according to Allison Colden, executive director of Maryland for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. In recent years, she said, more than 1,300 acres of oyster reefs have been replenished in both states.In the past decade, Virginia has also tried to boost its oyster population with aquaculture farms that raise oysters in cages and return their spat to natural waters. The commonwealth increased its number of oyster farms to more than 130 in 2018, up from 60 in 2013, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.Last season, Virginia harvested 700,000 bushels of oysters, one of the highest annual harvests since the late 1980s, according to Adam Kenyon, chief of the shellfish management division at the Virginia Marine Resources Commission.Those efforts, plus Mother Nature, have helped create the delicate combination oysters need to survive.“In the last five years, we’ve seen a rebound,” Colden said. “Reproduction has been higher than the long-term average, and we’re seeing more consistency in how they’re doing year-to-year, and that’s a positive sign.”For Jeff Harrison, a fifth-generation waterman who serves as president of the Talbot County Watermen Association, the changes have been like a roller coaster over the 47 years he has made a living off the bay. He’s seen diseases hit, oyster-harvesting seasons shortened, prices fluctuate and many other watermen leave the business because they couldn’t turn a profit.“I’ve seen some of the worst seasons in oystering,” he said. “We’d always have ups and downs. Now we’re seeing a steady up, and we’re hoping we have turned the corner.”

Agriculture
Business
Conservation

N.C. Farm Bureau Asks State Supreme Court to Strike Environmental Protections From Hog Farm Permits

The North Carolina Supreme Court seemed to side with the agriculture lobby Wednesday in a hearing for a case whose outcome could nullify key environmental, civil rights and public health protections for neighbors of the state’s 2,000 industrialized livestock farms. If the justices uphold an appellate court’s decision in favor of the N.C. Farm Bureau […]

Lawyers for the farm lobby said requirements for releasing information and monitoring pollutants had resulted from a “sue and settle” tactic, when Black residents living near the farms filed a civil rights complaint and the federal government forced a settlement.By Lisa SorgThe North Carolina Supreme Court seemed to side with the agriculture lobby Wednesday in a hearing for a case whose outcome could nullify key environmental, civil rights and public health protections for neighbors of the state’s 2,000 industrialized livestock farms.

Agriculture
Health

These communities are unaware they’ve lived near toxic gas for decades. Why has no action been taken?

Five facilities near schools and houses in LA County fumigate produce shipped from overseas with methyl bromide. But the air agency doesn’t plan to monitor the air or take any immediate steps to protect people from the gas, which can damage lungs and cause neurological effects.

In summary Five facilities near schools and houses in LA County fumigate produce shipped from overseas with methyl bromide. But the air agency doesn’t plan to monitor the air or take any immediate steps to protect people from the gas, which can damage lungs and cause neurological effects. In a quiet Compton neighborhood near the 710 freeway, children on a recent afternoon chased each other at Kelly Park after school. Parents watched their kids play, unaware of a potential threat to their health.  On the other side of the freeway, just blocks from the park and Kelly Elementary School, a fumigation company uses a highly toxic pesticide to spray fruits and vegetables.  The facility, Global Pest Management, has been emitting methyl bromide, which can cause lung damage and neurological health effects, into the air near the neighborhood for several decades.  Earlier this year, the South Coast Air Quality Management District asked the company — along with four other fumigation facilities in San Pedro and Long Beach — to provide data on their methyl bromide usage. But the air quality agency does not plan to install monitors in the communities that would tell residents exactly what is in their air, or hold community meetings to notify them of potential risks. Instead, the South Coast district has launched a preliminary screening of the five facilities to determine if a full assessment of health risks in the neighborhoods is necessary. But even if that analysis is conducted, the agency won’t require the companies to reduce emissions unless they reach concentrations three times higher than the amounts deemed a health risk under state guidelines, said Scott Epstein, the district’s planning and rules manager. Piedad Delgado, a mother picking up her daughter from the Compton school, said she “didn’t even know” that the hazardous chemical was being used nearby. When a CalMatters reporter told her about the fumigation plant, Delgado wondered if it was causing her daughter’s recent, mysterious bouts of headaches and nausea. “It’s concerning. We may be getting sick but we don’t know why,” she said. For about the past 30 years, the companies have sprayed methyl bromide on imported produce arriving at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to kill harmful pests. Adults and children are shown after school at Kelly Elementary School in Compton, which is near a facility that uses a highly toxic fumigant, methyl bromide. Photo by Joel Angel Juarez for CalMatters Methyl bromide, which was widely used to treat soil on farm fields, has been banned worldwide for most uses since 2005 under a United Nations treaty that protects the Earth’s ozone layer. Exemptions are granted for fumigation of produce shipped from overseas. While little to no residue remains on the food, the gas is vented into the air where it is sprayed. State health officials have classified methyl bromide as a reproductive toxicant, which means it can harm babies exposed in the womb. With acute exposure, high levels can cause headaches, dizziness, nausea and difficulty breathing, while chronic exposure over a year or longer could cause more serious neurological effects, such as learning and memory problems, according to the California Air Resources Board. “It’s concerning. We may be getting sick but we don’t know why.”Piedad Delgado, Compton Resident State and local air quality officials are responsible for enforcing laws and regulations that protect communities from toxic air contaminants such as methyl bromide, while the Los Angeles County Agricultural Commissioner issues the permits to the fumigation companies. After CalMatters reported about the facilities last month, members of Congress representing the communities demanded “greater monitoring, transparency and oversight surrounding these fumigation facilities and their toxic emissions.” “We have serious concerns about the prevalent use of methyl bromide, a toxic pesticide, by container fumigation facilities in Los Angeles County,” U.S. Reps. Nanette Barragán, Maxine Waters and Robert Garcia wrote in an April 11 letter to state and local air regulators and county and federal agricultural officials.  “Several of these fumigation facilities are located close to homes, schools, parks, and other public spaces. Our communities deserve a greater understanding of the levels of toxic emissions from these facilities, the health risks from exposure to such emissions, and the oversight processes in place to ensure all protocols are maintained at these sites,” they wrote. “Our communities deserve a greater understanding of the levels of toxic emissions from these facilities, the health risks from exposure to such emissions, and the oversight processes in place.”U.S. Reps. Nanette Barragán, Maxine Waters and Robert Garcia Even though the San Pedro facility at the Port of Los Angeles and the Compton plant use the largest volumes of methyl bromide — a combined 52,000 pounds a year — the air in nearby communities has never been tested.  The two Long Beach facilities use much less, yet state tests in 2023 and 2024 detected potentially dangerous levels in a neighborhood near an elementary school. South Coast district officials said although certain levels of methyl bromide in the air could cause health effects, it doesn’t necessarily mean immediate action is necessary.  “We don’t want to go out and unnecessarily concern folks if there isn’t (a health concern), but we are actively investigating this right now,” said Sarah Rees, the South Coast district’s deputy executive office for planning, rule development and implementation.   Global Pest Management, which fumigates in Compton and Terminal Island, did not return calls from CalMatters. An employee at the facility declined to comment. A general manager at SPF Terminals in Long Beach also declined to comment.  Greg Augustine, owner of Harbor Fumigation in San Pedro, said his company has been permitted for more than 30 years and complies with all requirements. “To protect the health of our community, the air district establishes permit conditions and we comply with all of those permit conditions,” he said. “Those are vetted by the air district…and they’re all designed to protect the health of our community.”  “To protect the health of our community, the air district establishes permit conditions and we comply with all of those permit conditions.” Greg Augustine, owner of Harbor Fumigation in San Pedro Daniel McCarrel, an attorney representing AG-Fume Services, which fumigates at facilities in Long Beach and San Pedro, did not respond to questions but previously told CalMatters last month that the company is adhering to all of its permit conditions.  High levels found in Long Beach  Back in 2019, during regionwide testing, South Coast district officials detected methyl bromide in the air near the two West Long Beach facilities close to concentrations that could cause long-term health effects. The South Coast district took no action at the time — other than to publish a large study online of all toxic air contaminants throughout the four-county LA basin. Then, several years later, the state Air Resources Board found that the two facilities — SPF Terminals and AG-Fume Services — spewed high concentrations of methyl bromide at various times throughout the year. The state’s air monitor near Hudson Elementary School in West Long Beach — which is just about 1,000 feet from the two facilities — detected an average of 2.1 parts per billion in 2023 through part of 2024. Exposure to as little as 1 ppb for a year or more can cause serious nervous system effects as well as developmental effects on fetuses, according to state health guidelines. Spikes of methyl bromide were as high as 983 and 966 ppb in February and March of 2024. Short-term exposure to 1,000 ppb can cause acute health effects such as nausea, headaches and dizziness.  But state and district air-quality officials didn’t inform nearby residents about any of the monitoring data for longer than a year — not until three months ago, in a community meeting held in Long Beach.  First: Edvin Hernandez, right, waits to pick up his son at Kelly Elementary School in Compton, which is near a fumigation plant. Last: SPF Terminals in Long Beach uses methyl bromide. High levels of the gas were found near an elementary school in West Long Beach. Photos by Joel Angel Juarez and J.W. Hendricks for CalMatters Upon learning of the test results, the Los Angeles County Agricultural Commissioner a few months ago added new permit conditions for SPF Terminals and AG-Fume Services, including shutting doors, installing taller smokestacks and prohibiting fumigation during school hours, according to permits obtained by CalMatters. But the county permits for the three San Pedro and Compton facilities, which use much larger volumes of methyl bromide, remain unchanged, with none of the protections added to the Long Beach permits. And officials still have not held any community meetings there. The agricultural commissioner’s office declined to comment on the facilities. A complex web of ‘hot spots’ rules for methyl bromide About 38% of the methyl bromide used in California for commodity fumigation is in LA County, according to Department of Pesticide Regulation data for 2022. After many Long Beach residents expressed concerns, the South Coast district assessed all nine facilities permitted to use the chemical in the region and determined that five could pose a risk to residents.  Now the agency is going through a complex process outlined under the state’s Air Toxics “Hot Spots” law, enacted in 1987. Usage data, weather patterns and proximity to neighborhoods will be used to calculate a “priority score” for each of the five facilities. If a facility’s score is high enough, then the company will be required to conduct a full health risk assessment to examine the dangers to the community. None of the scores have been released yet. Risk assessments under the air district’s rules are a complicated, multi-step process likely to take many months. Smokestacks are shown at a facility that fumigates imported produce at the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro. AG-Fume Services and Harbor Fumigation operate at this facility. Photo by Joel Angel Juarez for CalMatters And these health assessments may not trigger any changes at the facilities. It all depends on whether certain thresholds for hazards are crossed. The state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment has set guidelines, called reference exposure levels, for concentrations of methyl bromide that could cause the long-term or short-term health effects, such as respiratory and neurological damage, nausea and fetal effects, based on human and animal studies. But South Coast district officials said action isn’t triggered if methyl bromide exceeds these reference levels. Instead, the district uses a state-created “hazard index” based on them. If a facility’s hazard index reaches one — which means concentrations outside the facility have reached the reference dose and could cause harm — the company must notify the public, under a South Coast district regulation. However, the facilities will only be required to take steps to reduce emissions if the hazard index reaches three — three times the reference level that indicates potential harm, according to that regulation. Expedited action is required under the rule if the index is five times higher.   “Just because it’s above the (reference level), it doesn’t mean it’s going to cause health impacts,” said Ian MacMillan, assistant deputy executive officer at the South Coast air district. He said the reference level indicates “there’s a possibility that there could be health impacts.”  The series of escalating thresholds is designed as a balancing act between regulating facilities and protecting the public, officials said. MacMillan also said methyl bromide emissions must be considered in the context of overall air quality in the region — the entire LA basin has an average hazard index of 5.5 when considering all sources of toxic air pollutants from industries and vehicles, he said. When told about the fumigation plants and lack of air testing and risk assessments, residents contacted by CalMatters were outraged. “There’s no interest from the government to protect our health,” said Edvin Hernandez, a father picking up his 9-year-old son from Kelly Elementary School in Compton. “We’re surviving by the hand of God.” The members of Congress — Barragán, Waters and Garcia — asked air regulators to install monitors near all Los Angeles County fumigation facilities, compile inspection records, conduct health assessments in the communities and provide all of the results on a public website.  “It is egregious that communities in California are still being impacted by this harmful and unnecessary chemical,” said Alison Hahm, a staff attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, which is working with community members. “In addition to stopping this ongoing public health threat in West Long Beach and Los Angeles, residents are demanding accountability and remedies for the harm endured.” The methyl bromide facilities in L.A. County are subjected to a different permitting process than elsewhere in California.  That’s because in 1996, the South Coast air district and the Los Angeles County Agricultural Commissioner agreed to share responsibility for regulating fumigating facilities. The agricultural office is tasked with issuing permits and the air agency is in charge of setting emissions limits and enforcing them.   In the Bay Area, the local air district has a similar agreement with agricultural departments that originated in 1997. However, the district decided that agreement is out of date so it is now issuing permits, too. One facility in the Bay Area uses the pesticide, Impact Transportation of Oakland. In 2019, the air district assessed the health risks of that facility and modeled how the fumes spread.   In the San Joaquin Valley, new facilities or those changing their methyl bromide use are subject to a health risk evaluation before a permit is issued. Facilities permitted before the air district was established in 1992 are subject to a review like the one that the South Coast district is now launching in San Pedro and Compton. The Los Angeles Agriculture Commissioner’s office, when asked whether it conducts a risk assessment before issuing permits, declined to answer any questions. CalMatters filed a public records request seeking risk assessments, but they said they had no records matching the request.   South Coast air regulators said they and the commissioner are now considering if any changes to their agreement should be made.  Allowed to use up to a half-ton of methyl bromide a day  Fumigation of produce using methyl bromide occurs within an enclosed facility, and the produce is covered by a tarp when sprayed. The fumes are then released into the atmosphere through tall smokestacks, a process called aeration. CalMatters filed a public records request with the county agricultural office and received the five facilities’ permits for 2023 through 2025. The permits show that the two Long Beach companies are now required to take an array of new precautions to limit fumes emitted into communities that the three Compton and San Pedro families are not — even though the Long Beach ones use much smaller volumes of methyl bromide. The San Pedro and Compton plants are allowed to use up to 1,000 pounds of methyl bromide in a 24-hour period. In contrast, the Long Beach plants can use up to 200 pounds in 24 hours, and in Oakland, Impact Transportation’s permit allows only 108 pounds.  First: Pallets of produce are piled up at the outer berths at the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro. Last: A tarped area holds a tank that contains a hazardous gas, most likely methyl bromide. A fan and roof vents ventilated the area while garage doors were left open on April 8, 2025. AG-Fume Services and Harbor Fumigation operate at this location. Photos by Joel Angel Juarez for CalMatters The San Pedro and Compton facilities release fumes into the atmosphere during the daytime, except when they use an exhaust stack meeting certain height requirements, according to their permits. The two Long Beach facilities, SPF Terminals and AG Fume Services, have new, additional requirements this year: Fumigation can’t occur between 8:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. when a school is within 1,000 feet. And by the end of this month, they must replace their smokestacks with taller ones that are at least 55 feet tall, which disperse the fumes better. All doors must be closed during fumigation and aeration and fans must be used in the aeration process.  ‘We don’t have a choice’ At a ballpark on a recent day in San Pedro, Eastview Little League players took the field.  When a 13-year-old boy on the Pirates team was up to bat, his mom, Amy Shannon, cheered him on.  “Let’s go D! Deep breath boy, you got it!” she shouted.  Then she paused. Maybe she shouldn’t be encouraging her son to take a deep breath, she said. Shannon had just learned from CalMatters about the fumigation facility across the street from the baseball field. Amy Shannon, left, and Roxanne Gasparo, right, attend their children’s Little League game at Bloch Field near the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro on April 8, 2025. Both women were unaware that a fumigation facility nearby has been using a toxic gas for about 30 years. Photo by Joel Angel Juarez for CalMatters At the facility where AG Fume and Harbor Fumigation operate, located at 2200 Miner Street, it was business as usual that day. A ship was docked on one side of the Los Angeles Port berth. On the other side, hundreds of stacks of fruits and vegetables were visible through several large garage doors.  Some of the stacks were covered with plastic. A tank containing a fumigant — labeled with a hazard sign depicting a skull — was hooked up outside. Yellow smokestacks protruded from the facility.  An AG-Fume Services truck was parked near one of the garage doors. Workers wearing yellow vests and sun-protective hats closed the garage doors, but left them slightly open at the bottom.  At the baseball field, Shannon watched the game with a friend, Roxanne Gasparo. Both women grew up in San Pedro. Gasparo said she wasn’t at all surprised to learn that a dangerous gas could be in their air.   “Because it’s a port town, unfortunately, we’re used to pollution. We have the port, obviously, and all the refineries next to us,” Gasparo said. “There’s really no way to get out of it unless you leave the city, and because most of the families here are blue collar families that rely on the unions, we kind of don’t have a choice,” she added. “We just deal with it and raise our kids the best we can.” More about air pollution in port communities ‘We should be in crisis mode’: Toxic fumigant could be seeping into these communities March 21, 2025March 26, 2025 Polluted communities hold their breath as companies struggle with California’s diesel truck ban December 10, 2024December 10, 2024

Agriculture
Animals
Business

Suggested Viewing

Chicken Soup for the Soil

Chicken Soup for the Soil follows the journey of North Carolina farmers Rachel Herrick and Suzanne Nelson Karreman as they work to rehabilitate farm soil ecosystems one pasture at a time. We learn that animals are not commodities and insects are not pests. They are partners in regenerating the soil. These are grassroots farms working with Nature to help Nature bounce back.

Land Use
Agriculture
Climate

On the Brink

A short movie explaining how sea lice coming from fish farms in British Columbia are harming wild salmon to the brink of extinction.

Animals
Agriculture
Extinction

Better Bites with Bugs

The practice of eating bugs -- entomophagy -- has a lot to commend it. You may disagree. But try to put your preconceptions aside!

Agriculture
Food

Sustainable Living with Patrick Lang

A day in the life of Patrick Lang living a sustainable life in Malibu… filmed before his home and community were consumed by fire in the fall of 2018.

Sustainable
Land Use
Solutions

Swallowtail - An Apprenticeship Story

Swallowtail: An Apprenticeship Story follows six young aspiring farmers as they navigate the rollercoaster season of 2019-2020 in North Central Florida. The film centers on the thoughts and experiences of these apprentices who leave home to live at Swallowtail Farm and how the COVID-19 pandemic turned an already challenging learning experience into an unprecedented one. Throughout their journey, they reflect on issues of food security, sustainability practices, and community.

Agriculture
Food
Youth

Join us to forge
a sustainable future

Our team is always growing.
Become a partner, volunteer, sponsor, or intern today.
Let us know how you would like to get involved!

CONTACT US

sign up for our mailing list to stay informed on the latest films and environmental headlines.

Subscribers receive a free day pass for streaming Cinema Verde.
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.