Airborne Pesticide Drift

On this page:

• About Pesticide Drift
• Our Goals
• Current Work of the Drift Team
• How to Get Involved
• What to Do If You Have Been Drifted On
• Resources
• Acknowledgments

About Pesticide Drift

Pesticide drift is the movement of pesticides through the air, away from the area where they were applied.

Pesticide drift can be hazardous to your health and the environment

High concentrations of pesticide drift in the air can cause immediate (or “acute”) poisonings, resulting in serious illness and, in rare cases, death. Exposure to pesticide drift may cause birth defects, cancer, asthma, developmental disabilities and other long-term (or “chronic”) health effects. Pesticide drift can also harm the local environment by contaminating waterways, air, and soil, killing fish, birds and other wildlife.

Pesticide drift can be hard to detect

Sometimes you can see and smell a cloud of pesticides drifting off a field, but some pesticides are invisible and odorless, which means you can be exposed to them without even knowing it. Not all pesticide drift happens during or right after a pesticide application. Some pesticides continue to evaporate from fields for several days to several weeks after an application is completed ("volatilization drift"). Find out more about different kinds of drift.

Who is affected?

People who live near farms, or in the city or suburbs can all be affected by pesticide drift. People can be affected anywhere pesticides are used. Pesticides sprayed onto a school sports field may drift into the classroom. When someone applies pesticides in their garden, the chemicals may drift into their neighbors' yards. Pesticides can travel long distances and have been found as far as 50 miles away from where they were applied.

Our Goals

The overarching goal of our work is to protect people from exposure pesticide drift. We can make this vision become a reality by:

• Phasing out the use of the most toxic and drift-prone pesticides, especially fumigants.
• Increasing restrictions on spray drift during applications.
• Establishing buffer zones, posting and notification around treated fields.
• Supporting local groups to change drift policy at the regional and state levels.

Current Work of the Drift Team

Pesticide Drift is a complex problem with many manifestations. The current work of the drift team reflects this and includes:

• Drift Catcher Projects in multiple states (experiments which measure levels of pesticides in the air, most often at homes or schools that are located near fields)
• The BioDrift Project, which combines measurement of drift with measurement of body burden (usually determined by measuring concentrations of pesticides or metabolites in blood or urine).
• Promotion of Regulations Requiring Posting, Notification and Buffer Zones around fields which are treated with highly volatile or highly hazardous pesticides
• When the drift team judges that it has unique and useful information and analysis to offer, we offer it to communities that have been poisoned by pesticide drift and support their efforts to protect themselves from future drift incidents.
• U.S. and State Pesticide Registration Processes
• State-Level Drift Policy

Arguably the most dangerous groups of pesticides are the fumigants, which are highly toxic, highly volatile and used at very high application rates (hundreds of pounds per acre). Their volatility makes them highly prone to drift. The drift team's current work also includes the following fumigant-focused projects:

• U.S. EPA's Fumigant Review (click for more information)
  
• U.S. and State Methyl Iodide Registration
• Pesticide Contributions to the Ozone Problem in California
• California Metam Sodium Permit Conditions

How to Get Involved

Are there pesticides in YOUR air? Organize to fight drift!

Many communities are concerned about the pesticides in their air and the effects pesticides have on their health and well-being. Community groups around the country have been organizing for change on local, state, and national levels. Local campaigns demanding protection zones around schools and residential sites where no pesticide applications are permitted, state-wide legislative changes, and efforts focusing on influencing national pesticide regulation and policy are some examples of how people are organizing against pesticide drift.

• Check out the Fight Pesticide Drift! page for more information.
• Participate in state and national campaigns to reduce drift. See Current Work, for an idea of the range of projects that need the attention of concerned people.
• Take Action through our Action Center and sign up to be notified when new issues could benefit from your involvement.
• If you have questions about the drift team's work, contact PANNA.

What to Do if You Have Been Drifted On

Things you can do if you have been affected by drift.

Acknowledgments

This work has been funded by the Cedar Tree Foundation, the San Francisco Foundation, the Beldon Foundation, the John Merck Foundation and individual supporters of Pesticide Action Network North America.

The Drift Team is grateful to Amy Rogers for her work developing the Secondhand Pesticides part of the PANNA web site.

Resources

See the complete list ofresources about pesticide drift.