Hawaii’s legislature should “undertake a major update of [state] pesticide laws and regulation,” says a draft report commissioned by the Hawaii Department of Agriculture, and by Kauai county. The $100,000 report was prompted by public concern over pesticide use on the islands by GMO seed companies, including Syngenta and DuPont Pioneer, reports Honolulu Civil Beat.
According to The Guardian, about 90 percent of GMO corn planted in the U.S. comes from Hawaiian seed and largely from Kauai.
To date, Hawaii’s legislature has been reluctant to draft new regulations for ag companies. A 2015 report by the Center For Food Safety found that GMO corn in Hawaii is sprayed with up to 17 times more pesticides than on the mainland. Earlier this year, 10 Syngenta employees were taken to the hospital after they were exposed to the pesticide chlorpyrifos. All were released and cleared for work the next day.
The draft of the state report calls for Hawaii to develop new standards for pesticide use, taking into account that health effects can develop through chronic exposure at even mild toxicity levels. It also recommended buffer zones around pesticide application areas, and that companies notify the public as to when, where and how much pesticide they apply.
Researchers said that while they didn’t find any “statistically significant evidence” that large ag companies in Hawaii where harming human health, gaps in the data made it hard to pinpoint the effects of contamination. To help fill in those gaps, the report suggests that the state improve its chemical monitoring of air and water around farms, but also at schools, where officials could foresee asking students for voluntary blood and urine samples.
The report was overseen by a third-party consulting firm (Accord3.0) and included an organic farmer, a senior research manager at Dupont Pioneer, and a site manager at Dow AgroSciences, among others. Public comments will be accepted until 5 p.m. on April 18.