Pesticide Safety Bill

Pesticide Safety Bill

Bob Larson
Bob Larson
I'm Bob Larson. A bill that establishes the Pesticide Application Safety Committee was signed into law by Governor Jay Inslee last week.

The legislation is the result of the pesticide application safety work group that met during the interim last year.

Representative Tom Dent was co-chair of the work group ...

DENT ... "I had a House Bill 1725, and the Senate companion Bill was 5550, and that has to do with creating a pesticide application safety work group committee that is really good and the bills were the same. This is then end of about a year-and-a-half's worth of work to get this finished and I think it's going to be a good program for agriculture."

Dent told Yakima's KIT Radio the bill offers protection plus effectiveness ...

DENT ... "If you talk to the Department of L&I and then you talk to the Department of Agriculture and you talk to the Department of Health about any drift claims or drift issues of pesticide exposures, every one of those agencies will tell you a different story. And, part of what this bill does is it brings them all together to have a common database so we can tell the same story. And I think when we have the same story, we're going to have the real truth and be able to work through it."

Like so many things, Dent says it's about education ...

DENT ... "The other thing that it also does is it's going to provide more education for our applicators and also education for our farm workers because sometimes they're out there working and they don't understand what's going on and they need more education as well so everybody can work together and have more harmonious outcomes."

The Moses Lake Republican says he's excited about this bill and thinks it will be really good for agriculture.

The bill takes effect at the end of July.

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