As EPA Drags Feet on Toxic Pesticide Ban, Parents and Teachers Take Action

As we take the EPA to court to force it to ban chlorpyrifos, communities are organizing to protect their kids. Bonnie Wirtz nearly died when chlorpyrifos drifted from a nearby field into her rural Minnesota home. Her son, also exposed, was recently diagnosed with a neurodevelopmental disorder. That night , the crop dusting plane flew so close that for a moment Bonnie Wirtz thought it was about to crash into her home. Instead, it hovered above her rural Minnesota home, spraying pesticides onto the alfalfa field next door. The toxic white powder soon drifted into her air-conditioning unit. Then it seeped into the room where she was folding clothes, and then into her lungs with every breath she took. She started coughing. “I was not able to breathe,” she says. Wirtz quickly looked for her then husband, and they both grabbed her infant son, who was in another room. They put a cloth over his mouth as they fled their house. He was not even a year old. “I went into the emergency room and was almost in cardiac arrest,” Wirtz says. The rest of the family seemed fine, but doctors told her that the toxic agent was shutting […]

Click here to view original web page at As EPA Drags Feet on Toxic Pesticide Ban, Parents and Teachers Take Action