More On Pesticide Changes

More On Pesticide Changes

More On Pesticide Changes. I'm Greg Martin with Washington Ag Today.

EPA has announced increased protection for the nation's two million agricultural workers and their families. What is that going to mean for ag producers? Jim Jones, Assistant Administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention.

JONES: The regulation we just finalized this week makes improvements on the existing rule in place so many of the requirements that we have just added are modification to things that producers are already doing. So right now they're required to train their farmworkers every five years, it's going to be every year. I've had conversations with a number of farmers who have said, you know what? Just for practical purposes, I'm doing it every year.

One area of concern for producers is the area of increased records keeping.

JONES: Most producers will tell me that they keep records of their pesticides. This rule requires that they be kept for purposes of understanding if a farmworker may have been in a field when a certain pesticide was applied. So there's a different purpose for it but chances are they were already doing it.

Other requirements involve signage, no entry zones and age restrictions on handling pesticides. Jones says most of these should just be common sense and already practiced.

JONES: I think this is going to be a good thing and we will see fewer, inadvertent accidental worker exposures and poisonings and that's the objective.

And that's Washington Ag Today. I'm Greg Martin, thanks for listening on the Ag Information Network of the West.

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