Farmworker families, teachers and environmental justice groups across California are demanding stronger protections from the fumigant pesticide 1,3-dichloropropene, saying the state’s newest regulation allows exposure far above what health experts consider safe.
The chemical, also known as 1,3-D or by its brand name Telone, is a cancer-causing soil fumigant widely used on berry, grape, almond and walnut crops. It is banned in several countries.
Californians for Pesticide Reform and partner organizations held a statewide online press conference Tuesday, paired with simultaneous rallies in agricultural regions including Modesto, Watsonville, Fresno and Oxnard.
Speakers said the Department of Pesticide Regulation’s recently finalized rules fail to protect farmworker families and schoolchildren who live, work and attend school near treated fields.
Gabriela Fassi, a senior policy strategist with Sierra Club California, said the department rejected the state’s own toxicologists at the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, which set a long-term safe exposure limit of 0.04 parts per billion in the air.
“Here in California, DPR has not only refused to ban 1-3-D, but has refused to follow the findings of the state's own cancer experts at the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment,” Fassi said. “In the end, DPR has given us a regulation that allows school children to be exposed to 14 times more 13D than the cancer risk threshold level established by our state toxicologists at OEHHA.”
Community groups also raised concerns that the highest exposures occur in predominantly Latino and Indigenous neighborhoods, describing the regulation as a form of environmental racism.
The Department of Pesticide Regulation said in a statement that it is committed to protecting public health and is working with toxicologists to reduce exposure. The agency says additional protections will take effect in 2026.
