Hundreds of schools in the Midwest “nestle against fields of corn and soybeans that are routinely sprayed with pesticides that could drift onto school grounds,” but states “do not require any kind of buffer zones and seldom require any notification that pesticides are about to be sprayed,” says the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting. Nine states in other parts of the country, with California the most prominent, have laws that mandate buffer zones.
“In general, our pesticides here, as far as the type of pesticides, are just as dangerous or have the ability to drift or anything else as the pesticides out west,” Indiana University Marc Lame told the center. Some insecticides are associated with neurological problems and delayed child development at low levels of exposure. The center pointed to estimates that 31 elementary schools in Illinois are within 200 feet of a corn or soybean field, 56 in Ohio and Indiana with 45.
The superintendent of a rural district in Champaign County in downstate Illinois says agricultural pesticides are not a concern the district’s elementary schools are next door to farm fields. The center said 41 states, “including all of those in the agricultural Midwest, have no regulations requiring buffer zones around schools and day cares to protect young children from pesticide chemicals, should they accidentally drift off target from nearby crop fields.”
“While the distances vary, Alabama, North Carolina, Louisiana, Arizona, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maine and New Hampshire all have statewide regulations that restrict aerial spraying of pesticides near schools by distances ranging from 150 feet to 1,000 feet,” said the center. California prohibits the spraying of pesticides within a quarter-mile of public schools and licensed day-care centers from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. on school days.