Frontline Communities

Our pesticide rules are broken, and farmworkers and their families are the first to know — and be harmed.

Kids today are sicker than they were a generation ago, and a growing body of scientific evidence points to pesticides as a reason why. From childhood cancers to learning disabilities and asthma, a wide range of childhood diseases and disorders are on the rise.

This reports presents the results of monitoring for airborne pesticides conducted between June 2006 and August 2009 in central Minnesota. Overall, the results of the study indicate that for several months each summer, central Minnesota residents in potato-growing areas are regularly exposed to low to moderate lovels of the commonly used fungicide chlorothalonil in air.

Afraid or unsure of who to call about illegal pesticide spraying? Polluters beware: one California county may have found a solution.

The Kern Environmental Enforcement Network (KEEN) is an innovative tool that employs texting and web technology to expands the enforcement capacity of government agencies with the help of alert community members. KEEN enables residents to provide anonymous eyewitness accounts of local problems quickly and accurately, 24 hours a day in both English and Spanish. And it works.

Bees are in trouble and policymakers just aren’t acting quickly enough to help them. But home gardeners, backyard beekeepers and ordinary people all over the country have been stepping up.