Read the full article by Liza Gross (Inside Climate News)
“An ambitious bill to keep toxic ‘forever chemicals’ off California produce lost its teeth after the chemical and agricultural industry spent hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying against it.
The bill that landed on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk last week simply requires regulators to track and disclose pesticide applications in the state.
It’s ‘a shell of what we set out to do,’ said its author, Assemblymember Nick Schultz, D-Burbank. ‘We missed an opportunity this year to really be a national leader on this issue, and to catch up with a handful of other states that are already pursuing this legislation,’ he added, referring to Maine and Minnesota, which have already enacted laws restricting PFAS pesticides.
Early versions of Schultz’s bill, A.B. 1603, would have prohibited state regulators from approving new pesticides with perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, starting in 2028. In 2030, the legislation would have outlawed the sale of 23 PFAS pesticides already banned in Denmark and started to phase out the rest of the already approved products in 2035.”…