Senate Standing Committee on Agriculture and Environment

Hello everyone. This is a joint informational briefing with the Senate Committee on Agriculture Environment. I am the Vice Chair, Tim Richards. Do we have a mute? Thank you very much. And, and we also have our colleagues from the House. I'll let them introduce myself. Chair.

Yea. Aloha Kakou. Thank you to the Senate for helping host this info briefing today on pesticides. We have the Committee on Energy and Environmental Protection, Chair Lohan, Vice Chair Peruso, and the Committee on Agriculture and Food Systems. Myself, Kirsten Kahaloa, and our wonderful Vice Chair, Representative Kush and other Members of our committees may join later.

So thank you folks for participating and the Senate collaborating today. We want to turn it over so we can maximize our time. Thank you everyone for being here to talk about pesticides. And we'll hand it over to our Councilmember, Fern Holland.

Thank you so much. Thank you all so much for being here and hosting this. I'm not here as a Councilmember today. I just want to be clear on that.

I am basically just going to introduce a little bit about the topic and pass it over to our experts and just kind of explain a little bit about how we got to to this today, which we've been working for a couple of years to make this happen. So thank you again so much.

Today we're going to be talking a lot about restricted use pesticides. And so I'm just giving a brief introduction to what that is. We're not talking about pesticides that are purchased over the counter or general use pesticides which are easily accessible for all of us through regular purchasing at stores.

We are talking about specific special certification required to purchase and apply these pesticides. And restricted use pesticides do vary from state to state. So every state has a different list of what those are and today, you know, a lot of those are on the list because of considerable concern regarding health and environmental impact.

The reason that the state plays such an important role in the regulation of restricted use pesticides is that we see on the federal level that there really is a lack of independent study and regulation due to just the way that we in America don't really use the precautionary principle as much as other countries do, where instead of proving that there is no harm, you just basically release things and wait until there is evidence that there is harm.

And given the extent of industry lobbying on the federal level, we see that we end up very often without the kind of regulations that we need. Communities have been fighting for a lot of this information for over a decade, including my community where I was involved with the passing of Bill 2491.

Other counties also passed measures to try to get access to data and protections. But in 2016, there was a court verdict that basically said that due to implied preemption that this was really the state's responsibility. In 2018, the state passed Act 45 which allowed for disclosure.

And since then we've been trying to better understand the data and the impacts associated with what's being used in our communities. The 2019 data was the first round of data that became available and there was significant concern with certain heavy applications in north central Oahu that we started to look at.

We looked at frequency and combination, how many different chemicals are being used, different restricted use pesticides, that's combination, and then frequency is how often those are being applied. And certain things stood out.

For example, in my community on Kauai, on the west side of Kauai, there's a very large parcel that it's reporting out and we have over 1,500 applications reported in 2019 of restricted use pesticides.

So we're looking at that frequency of application and when we look at combination also, certain areas kind of rose to the top of which areas had the most combination of restricted use pesticides.

We were able to roughly estimate out of the 2019 data that only about 99% of all the restricted use pesticides reported were really only used by 10 users.

And of that, the bulk of that combination use on Oahu was almost 300,000 pounds that was reported for Oahu collectively and that included 31 different active ingredients and 32 different RUP formulations.

Surrounding north central Oahu, most of that application happening there. We did look at what was being used, particularly in north central Oahu, there was about 216,000 pounds reported.

Of those 23 different RUPS, we dove into some of the research on different types of concern and different categories that these pesticides fell into.

Of those 23 different restricted use pesticides reported, particularly just in north central Oahu, we saw that 16 were on the list for highly hazardous pesticides, 13 were already banned in other countries.

4 of them are considered carcinogens, three are known as possible, and the list goes on. But there's quite a bit of research that's still playing out on some of this. So there's a lot of unknowns there.

We are particularly concerned about areas that surround schools and in close proximity to communities, which is a lot of where the conversation has been. Some of the heaviest use is reported within a mile of some of these communities and also the coastline and schools which are indicated by those yellow tabs we tried to best summarize.

The heaviest use seems to be of two different fumigants. 1, 3-dichloropropene, which our experts will speak about today, and Metam sodium, another fumigant. 1,3-D is already banned in 34 different countries. It's commonly known as Talone.

And then there was a whole swath of other RUPS we tried to and then we looked at some of the overall threats and they really vary from pesticide to pesticide and the research is out on a lot of these...

...but definitely connected to different types of reproductive impacts, carcinogens, respiratory, Parkinson's disease, when it comes to paraquat and some of these environmental concerns.

And then just one thing that I wanted to bring up in our research is that there doesn't seem to be any real studies on the long term mixtures of some of these pesticides. There's no research about when you combined pesticides, what happens. They're always kind of individually analyzed.

So we have the unknown unknowns of what this mixture of RUPs and then general use pesticides would result in. And there's been a lot of efforts for different types of policy changes to address this over the last few years. I mean definitely farmer support in helping farmers transition to more regenerative agricultural practices is huge.

And just giving farmers support in the transition is really important. Looking at how we better land manage our public lands in General and our state lands, providing buffer zones has been an ongoing conversation. Increasing the RUPs list in Hawaii to include malathion came up a few years ago. And improving data reporting overall.

And then more recently in relation to pollinators, we've been talking more about neonic restrictions and so I'm just going to kick it over to our Department of Agriculture, but thank you so much. That's my intro.

Department of Ag, whenever you're ready.

Okay, cool. Good afternoon, Chairs, Vice Chairs, Members of your respective committees. My name is Greg Takashima. I'm the Pesticides Program Manager representing the Hawaii Department of Agriculture.

And today I'm here to give some background on pesticides and the role the Department plays in both pesticide regulation as well as use, education and outreach, all of those things.

So let's see, moving over. In its simplest form, pesticides are described as substances that are used to control pests. They include herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, disinfectants and many other products that we use in everyday use. Right. So Clorox wipes, dog collars, flea collars, the Clorox that you use to bleach your clothes.

Those are all considered pesticides that we use in everyday. So going back to a little bit of what Fern described, we have two classifications of pesticides, "General Use Pesticides" and "Restricted Use Pesticides." Pesticides, as Fern mentioned, general use pesticides can be purchased by anyone and can be found at general retailers.

Federally-restricted use pesticides, or RUPs, can be restricted for a variety of reasons, including acute toxicity or unreasonable effects on the environment. If applicators aren't appropriately trained and educated, the state also has statutory authority to classify and restrict pesticide products based on their ability to leach into groundwater.

RUPs can only be purchased and applied by applicators certified by the Department. RUPs are strictly regulated and require reporting for their use and sales. Essentially, the Department tracks from cradle to grave for these restricted use pesticides.

A little overview and regulatory references, the Pesticides Branch enforces and implements the Federal Insecticide Fungicide and Rodenticide Act, also known as FIFRA and Hawaii Pesticides Law or Hawaii Revised Statutes 149A. The Department is delegated primacy through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. EPA.

And the Department is the lead agency on regulating FIFRA and refers cases that we the Department initiates over to EPA as necessary. One thing to note about FIFRA is that it is a very unique law that is as much a commerce law as it is an environmental protection law.

It is unlike other environmental laws like the Clean Water Act or the Clean Air Act. FFRA allows the EPA to conduct a cost-benefit analysis weighing the cost of potential human health effects and environmental concerns with the benefit of health and economic production through agriculture and other industries.

So this is our, this is my Pesticides Branch. Those are some of our staffs. Give you some faces to the work that we actually do. We this is a photo of one of our workshops that we take approximately twice a year. The Pesticides Branch is made up of four main sections.

The Enforcement Section, which is our largest section with 15 positions, Education Section and Certification Section with 12 positions, our Registration Section with four positions, and our lab with three positions. So I'll go over each of these sections relatively quickly just to kind of explain what they do.

The Enforcement Section, sorry, the Enforcement Section is responsible for inspections and pesticide use and distribution. The staff in this section also directly respond to complaints from the community within 24 hours of initial contact. So you'll see the numbers. Oh, sorry, the Enforcement Section. Right.

You'll see the numbers of inspections that we conducted over the past year, the amount of complaints that we've had to take. So those are actually official complaints. We also receive a ton of non official complaints. Right. They'll initiate something, call us, hey, somebody, we smelled something.

But then, you know, we go out and meet with them and they say, okay, well maybe it wasn't an official thing. Right. So we don't log those. But we also do take the time to ensure that we talk the community through or the concern through with the people who do call us.

We also do marketplace surveillance, which is basically, we go to the retailers and we talk to them. We do an inspection to ensure that all of the products are licensed, all of the sales signs that Act 45 initiated are there, and we make sure that the products that are there are legally there.

Okay. So our education and certification section provides stakeholders and educational outreach events, the certification of applicators. And we compile and summarize and analyze all of the RUP use reports.

There's approximately 1500 certified applicators throughout the state. Every single one of them is compiled by our staff in the Education and Certification section.

So that's specific to RUP use on an annual basis. Several of my staff from the Education section were here for Ag Day at the Capitol providing pesticide related information.

And while this section primarily focuses on preemptive consultation to ensure thorough understanding of pesticide laws and labels, the section is also responsible for rehabilitating applicators who have violated pesticide saw. So we want to get to them before. But we're also here, this section is also here for the after.

Make sure that they know what they did was wrong and fix what they did. You'll see a couple of pictures. So the first picture is the schools and some of the buffer zones around the schools, currently the 100 foot buffer zones. My staff did a number of mapping for that that's publicly available on our website.

You'll also see below that we created some specific CRB information. Right. We wrap a lot of the trees that we treat to ensure that the public are informed of treatment, to ensure that they don't purposefully or, yeah, purposefully eat coconut that was applied with a pesticide. Our registration and technical review section.

So we have 10,000 licensed products, pesticide products in the state. Our staff on a triannual basis, renew products. Right. So you'll see about 3,000 products renewed.

We have seven special registrations right now. We have the groundwater review process, which is what you actually see, that modeling and the pictures of each of the islands.

That is the environmental protection side of our branch. Right. They have to review and ensure that these products won't unreasonably affect the groundwater within the state. Right. And I went over that a little bit earlier in terms of our statutory authority of how we restrict restricted use pesticides restrictions.

This section is also in charge of approving what are called special registration. So the top right is kind of cool picture. It's a paintball gun. But these paintball guns actually have what's called an herbicide ballistic technology.

So there's an herbicide in that paintball and behind the names there's Myconia. You can see it kind of on the bottom right. So that is very specific use of a pesticide, of an herbicide and it's very targeted for very invasive species.

This section also has done what's called a special local needs registration for an application of Advion WDG, which is an insecticide and it's for the mixture and to make sure that little fire ant can actually take in the pesticide product.

So this section is very cognizant of the environmental effects that pesticides has and they do fully technically review a lot of the products that we have in the state. Actually every product that we have in the state. Okay. So lastly we have our chemical analysis lab. They provide laboratory support for the pesticides branch.

The lab is able to analyze samples taken by our inspectors and they confirm the absence or presence of pesticide products. Our staff chemists, they don't like to be in pictures so they wanted to show off pictures of their really expensive laboratory equipment. Okay, so the pesticides branch isn't without gaps. Right.

Pertinent to today's briefing and discussion, the branch does not have a toxic on staff. We rely on the Hawaii Department of Health and their Poison control Center to fulfill that role. The branch does not have staff to also conduct long term monitoring for both human health and environmental media.

The branch has partnered with the University of Hawaii, USGS, and the Hawaii Department of Health in the past focusing on air, surface water, and groundwater quality sampling events.

We cherish our partnerships and the relationships, but we also understand that it's not USGS, UH, or even HDOH's mission to solely focus on the short and long term effects of pesticide use.

Many of the comparisons shared today will be closely associated with the State of California who has robust who has a robust regulatory scheme for pesticides and is looked at as the Rolls Royce of pesticide regulation.

The State of California has a Department of Pesticide Regulation with staffing of 553 in fiscal year 25, not including over 250 county inspectors statewide, CDPR's budget allocation was nearly $159 million in FY25. HDOA's entire departmental budget totals just over $56 million, with the pesticides branch allocated approximately $4 million.

That's over 20 times the amount of staffing and 40 times the amount of funding in comparison. So the next couple of slides are some of the presentations that my staff gives, some of the outreach events that my staff gives to reduce the potential for drift and runoff.

We talk about adjuvants and things that you can add to pesticide sprays that will reduce the chance of drift. We also talk to them about weather conditions, forecasts, using those that type of information to properly apply pesticides. Going a little bit into droplet size, you can see that this is also something that we teach them, right?

A fine spray, a medium spray, of course spray and a very coarse spray or extra coarse. Basically, the finer the spray, the more coverage you get, but also the higher potential you'll have to drift because it's so fine it turns into a mist and it's gone. Based on environmental conditions, we also push integrated pest management.

You'll see in the circle that we rely on inspection, identification, monitoring and then we modify the environment prior to chemical application. This is what we really want to ensure because we want to only have to use pesticides as a last resort. We also ensure that they keep records to ensure that they're applying products appropriately.

Lastly, and in closing, please see the contact information for the Pesticides Branch staff statewide. Again, I'd like to thank the representatives, the respective chairs, vice chairs and Committee Members for your time and inviting the Department to this info briefing.

Also, I wanted to thank the Legislature for passing Act 231 last year and the bills moving forward this legislative session that the Department and selfishly, the Pesticides Branch are in support of. I'm available to respond to any questions.

Thanks, Greg, and thanks for the pitch for DOA. Really appreciate that. Okay, so what we're going to do is we're going to hold questions. Unless there's a burning question right now, we'll hold questions so we get through all the presentations. Sound good? Okay, thank you very much, Greg. Moving on, I have a Dr. Rosanna Weldon.

I think we're actually doing Dr. Epps and next I'm going to share his.

Is this going to be on Zoom or is this.

It's he's in person right here. I'm just going...

Who is that in place of?

Aloha. Thank you for this opportunity to speak. I'm Lee Evslin. I'm a pediatrician from the island of Kauai.

Can I ask you to come a little closer to the mic? Because this is being live stream. You want to be sure people can hear you.

I'm going to start this by saying don't look at the slides. They come later in the talk. I wanted to speak for the first part of this. I'm here wearing two hats.

I'm speaking one, as a representative of the Hawaii Chapter of the American Adacemy of Pediatrics, and number two, as a past Member of the JFF, the Joint Fact Finding Task Force that served on Kauai 2014-2015.

So starting as a pediatrician. In 2012, the American Academy of Pediatrics put out two publications, a policy statement and a technical report on pesticides in children. And basically the opening line of that report was that pesticides represent a large group of products designed to kill or harm unwanted plants or animals, making them inherently toxic.

The influence of low level exposure on child health is of increasing concern. And these are kind of not particularly words that aren't alarming on their own, but they actually changed the way that pediatricians looked at this. Our training was about acute poisoning. If a child drank a pesticide or was sprayed with a pesticide.

We were not trained to think about chronic low level exposure. And just kind of a little bit of an explanation. The American candidate in pediatrics is made up of most of the board certified pediatricians and pediatric specialists in the country.

And for 60,000 of us, and the best and brightest of us write these policies that go around the world basically on almost anything that has to do with pediatric care. So as a pediatrician, when I talk to a parent, I'm thinking, what is the policy? And these policies are extremely well respected.

So when they said this, it was a little bit of a game changer. Never in my career had I talked to a family about are you using bug bombs in your house? How often do you get your house spring? The concept of low level exposure wasn't brought to my attention and it was kind of those dramatic words.

And what was not reassuring was what they associated. So what they did is they said the reason we're concerned is the science is now increasingly showing us adverse consequences associated with this low level usage. Specifically, they talked about cancer, brain tumors and leukemia. They talked about birth issues, low birth weight, congenital abnormalities and premature babies.

They talked about neurobehavioral issues, which I'm going to talk about a little bit later. But these include developmental delay, meaning you're not developing properly, autism, attention deficit disorders and other disabilities, which are often attention deficit disorders, and the increase in asthma. So these were kind of wake up calls.

And they said to pediatricians, okay, pediatricians of the world, we want you to do something about this.

And what they asked us to do to do was to talk to our parents to talk about ways to decrease this exposure, such as don't go out on the lawn when it's just been sprayed, don't go in parks that have just been sprayed, try not to overspray your house, don't use bug bombs, all kinds of things.

But they also asked us to talk to our legislative bodies. They said the things that interest us are what they call right to know, which is what's being sprayed where and notification of what's being sprayed if it's in a public area and two, spray pesticide free areas around schools and places that people congregate. So buffer zones essentially.

So that's why I'm here, I'm doing what they're saying.

And that's why the American candidate, the Hawaii Chapter, the American Pediatrics is doing like other chapters, excuse me, around the country are doing, which is do the same thing, go to legislative bodies, make the pitch that there is more danger here than we were ever taught essentially prior to this time period.

And I have now since that time period talked to parents about pesticide usage. I'm going to talk a little bit now as my hat. So there was the Joint Fact Finding Task Force set up on Kauai.

And the reason they put a pediatrician on it is we unfortunately testify at that time about what the Murray County of Pediatrics was saying. So no good deed goes unpunished. They said, okay, put a pediatrician on the Committee.

And we met for 15 months and we looked at the health data on the west side of the island because we were asked to, because it was reported that there was 18 tons of restricted use pesticides in a relatively small footprint and there were adverse health consequences consequences on that side of the island. Those are the allegations.

We met for 15 months. We were all people with advanced degrees, including people from the seed companies. We did find that it was not a healthy community. But I want to say right up front, we did not prove that pesticide played a role in the unhealthiness of this community.

We didn't have the data, we could say this is an unhealthy community. Some of the conditions we're seeing match conditions, you can see with pesticide usage. But we didn't have drift data. We didn't really have geospatial data. We knew how much was being sprayed in aggregate, but we didn't know what's area by area.

We had no biologic markers. We couldn't say, oh, you have a high level of pesticides, and this came from this. So from the beginning of almost the first science in the report is saying we cannot say what caused these issues. But for people that represent areas, that spraying is going on.

I don't know if I get this to move. We did not see a very healthy community. So if you look at Waimea thing, it jumps out as overall cancer mortality was higher than. We have the state, we have the county, and we have the different areas of the island of Kauai on there.

So it kind of jumps up. Admissions for bacterial pneumonia jumps out again for the west side, again using state and county. Infant mortality jumped out on Waimea size. Obesity, which is a condition that can be associated with pesticide spraying, jumps out again as Waimea over the areas around it. COPD or asthma, same kind of thing.

Dialysis patients, same. So those entities, obesity, dialysis, diabetes, which isn't there, cancer mortality can be associated with pesticide usage. I'm going to just briefly show these slides that we. We came up with the Department of Education because they actually alarmed me as a pediatrician and others the most.

We looked at developmental delay because we were concerned about this being a side effect. And if you look at the Kekaha Elementary School, it leaps right out there as way up in terms of developmental delay. So Kekaha Elementary School was kind of ground zero as a catchment area for the area that Terrence are.

Elieli is more on the border and is also high, but not necessarily dramatically high. We looked at developmental delay by school district, and then we did something. It's a little confusing on this slide, but we. Let's see.

We took out Eleele and Kekaha and looked at them by themselves, which are the two areas that had the catchment area for the parents. And it was statistically significant as an outlier in terms of developmental delay for those two west side elementary schools.

We did the same thing with ADHD, which is under the classification of other disabilities. But again, we had this kind of outline on the west side. And the last thing we looked at was Easter Seals enrollment. And Easter Seals is 0 through 3 developmental delay is 3 through 8, Easter Seals is 0 through 3.

And again with Easter Seals, we saw that if you looked at the whole west side, it's the middle one. But again, if you tried to isolate the area that was the catchment area, it was again, a dramatic difference.

And the other fact that jumped out at us was that clorpirifos, which is a very toxic insecticide known to be connected with developmental delay or has been demonstrated aggressively to be associated with developmental delay, was being sprayed at three times the rate that it would normally be sprayed in the Maimon.

Reasons given that we had more of an insect problem here on Kauai, But I'd like to kind of leave you with a thought. So the danger with Torpyrifos and these types of pesticides is that they affect the central nervous system. That's how they kill insects. So they're central nervous system toxins.

So you take an unborn fetus, it goes from a few cells to this unbelievably grandiose development of nerves, this unbelievable nervous system that we're all born with, that we use for the rest of our lives.

And if the mother is exposed to something that's toxic to neurosystems, neurologic systems, it can affect that development at a very early stage, which means it affects that child for the rest of their life. And that's thought to be one of the mechanisms that developmental delay happens in these children exposed to copyright.

So it's a dramatic concept, basically, that a fetus can be exposed to something that has this toxicity and be affected for the rest of their lives. I'm going to come back with one last visual part of the JFF.

We were asked to go into Waimea Canyon Middle School because they had incidences where multiple children became sick after spraying in nearby fields. Again, we could not prove whether the spraying had any role to play in that. But the visual that the teachers brought us was dramatic. The visual was that they were big boom trucks.

They had videos of these boom trucks coming along this fence that was 60ft from this big bank of open windows. So the children and possibly pregnant teachers and possibly pregnant students are inside this room five hours a day. And spraying could go by 60ft from the open windows.

Now it's 100ft, but 100ft does not make that much difference. And the other way that pesticides distribute themselves is not only by droplets, not only by aerosol, but by dust. So pesticides fall in the dirt, they get absorbed into dirt particles, and the dust goes widely.

And there was some informal testing of homes half a mile to a mile from the fields. Dust samples using a Berkeley - help of Berkeley and their protocols. And we found low levels of clorpirifos in the homes in the dust levels that were considered low levels. But clorpirifos is not supposed to go off its site.

So even though they're low levels, they are of concern. I'm going to end at this point. Thank you for this ability to testify.

Thank you. Dr. Evslin, you'll be available for questions later. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. Moving on to Dr. Rosana Weldon.

Thank you for inviting me today, for having this opportunity to speak on a very small pilot project that I.

Please identify yourself just for the record.

Yes. Yes. My name is Rosana Weldon. Most people call me Sonny. I'm an Environmental Health Scientist at the University of Hawaii Office of Public Health Studies. In another role, I also am the Director of the Red Hill Registry in the University of Hawaii System, Office of Strategic Health Initiatives.

I'm here today to give an example of how I was hoping to use Hawaii's RUP data in a public health context.

So I would like to start by. Sorry, it's a little hard to see the slides with the Zoom in the way. We're talking about a little pilot project that was funded by the Ola Hawaii Program.

As you probably know, Ola means health in the Hawaiian language and in this case Hawaii is an acronym that stands for health and wellness achieved by impacting inequalities. And in particular, health disparities have been identified for racial and ethnic groups such as Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders and Filipinos.

The Ola Hawaii Program is a five year grant supported by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities through the research centers in minority institutions. And their goal is to improve minority health and reduce health and health care access disparities for communities in Hawaii which suffer disproportionately.

So the reason that I am presenting this particular study on ethnicity and RUP data is because I had a student who was interested in health disparities and was interested in exposure disparities in particular. And so eventually you'll see in these aims.

One of my aims, the first aim, was to host focus groups with community members of central Oahu. I sort of was introduced to this project after speaking with Fern and Annie at Hawaii Alliance for Progressive Action and started to wonder, well, what can we do with these brand new RUP data?

And so first of all, when I saw the maps of the proximity of the communities in Wahiawa to central Oahu pesticide use, I started to wonder, well, what does the community know? What does the community say? What do they want? And so I started to host these focus groups with this pilot funding.

The second aim is not really related to today, so I'm going to skip that one and go to the third aim, which is what most of my presentation is going to be about, which is to identify sources of health and ethnic data in Hawaii.

They can be used along with GIS maps of pesticide use and to perform secondary data analysis to create models of associations between restricted use pesticide exposures. And really I want to know about health issues, but I also want to know if there are effect modifications with ethnicity.

So the two health issues that I eventually, I'm not going to show them today because I don't have them ready yet, but eventually I'll be looking at asthma and cancer rates across the state. State. So just one slide on my focus groups, I haven't finished them yet.

I have done three of the four plan focus groups so far and with a total of 19 participants. And what I wanted to show you was just some basic theme analysis of what the community is saying.

So one of my questions that I have in my focus groups talks about, well, who do you turn to if you have concerns in your community about exposures or really anything else?

And they didn't necessarily know, but it actually got them thinking, well, who do I turn to and what do I do next and how do I make the next step if I do have concerns?

And so a lot of people talked about kind of this theme of call to action almost, you know, just actually more than half of the participants talked about that. They also really considered the importance of voting and considering who their policymakers are. They thought that was very important.

They also thought it was important to have an awareness of pesticides and what is going on in your community. Kind of related to that is this idea of consent or really the lack of consent, because they may be living close to these agricultural fields, but they really have no control over which pesticides are used in those locations.

And so that was one thing they brought up. And interestingly, they all felt this, not all five of them. So almost a quarter of them felt this desire to stay connected, not necessarily with me, but connected to the topic, connected to the other focus group participants and to do something. So now I'll get into the third aim.

As you know, I'm sure due to its long growing season, Hawaii is an ideal location for agricultural, Although admittedly there are quite a few pests that have to be dealt with.

And we just had background and the Act 45, which for today I'm mostly concerned about the requirement of pesticide applicators to report the name, amount and location of restricted use pesticide usage as it's applied in the fields.

This particular presentation is going to focus on two highly volatile fumigants, 1,3-Dichloropropene, or known as 1,3-D, and sodium methyl dithiol, carbamate or metam sodium, which is how I'll call it today, which we just heard have been linked to cancer and asthma.

We also have seen published associations between 1,3-D in particular and asthma emergency department visits that varies by ethnic group, in particular higher among non Hispanic black populations and Hispanic populations.

But really there have been no analyses of relationships between restricted use pesticides and asthma and cancer or among ethnic groups, Filipino, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, certainly not in Hawaii. Okay.

The one thing that I do want to mention is that the towns with the highest percentage of Filipinos or Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders either have historical roots in agriculture or they are current agricultural communities. So what we did, this slide is actually a little bit wrong.

What we did is we requested the data for 2019, 2020, and 2021 through the UEPA Uniform Information Practices Act from the Department of Agriculture. And so the first thing that we had to do was so much data cleaning. We received the data in various forms of PDFs and we had to convert that to spreadsheets.

And then there was even more standardizing that had to happen. We had to convert the amount of pesticides applied. It was reported in everything, gallons, pounds. We needed to standardize it so that we could sum it and use it. So we standardized it to pounds of usage. And then we also had to make.

Well, right now the RUP applications are reported in terms of tax map keys, but these are for the most part handwritten. And so there are varying tax map key lengths, extra characters, dashes, commas, multiple text map keys per entry, per amount used.

And so it's really quite a lot of work to standardize even just the tax map keys. And then even the area was reported in various units. And we had to convert all of that to standardized to acres. So we also tried to use Geographic Information Systems, or GIS to map relationships between pesticide, RUP use, and ethnicity.

This required several steps to basically join. We had to join the RUP data set with various data sets of tax map keys and also census blocks and also another layer pulling in the living atlas for the American Community Survey data, which that survey is done every five years.

So it overlaps, but there's no differentiation by year for these pesticide use data. And then eventually we came up with a GIS data table that we exported and used for statistical analysis. Now this is a limited data set and a student was doing this, this work.

So we can definitely build upon it, but you'll see in a minute that it's a pretty small data set. We use Stata for the statistical analysis. So this is a table showing trends of 1,3-D and metam sodium use in Hawaii. The reason I have California here is two reasons.

California is a huge food producer, the biggest in the US and so obviously their amount of pesticide use is many times more than Hawaii. But I want to point out the intensity of 1,3-D usage is higher than California's. That means that's the amount of pesticide applied over the acres treated, at least for 1,3-D.

It's not necessarily the same for metam sodium. But again, California's use of metam sodium, you know, is huge compared to Hawaii's. I also want to point out that the data for metam sodium for 2021 is a little bit different. And so that's why I have the stars there.

It's really only one tax map key that seems to use metam sodium over and over again. And so it just looks a little different. So this is also some summarized ethnicity data in the census tracts. I wanted to first point out that, overall, Hawaii is comprised of about 26% Filipino ethnic group.

And about 10% of Hawaii's population is Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. But one thing that I thought was interesting is that areas with this fumigant use actually have a higher proportion of Filipinos. But this didn't seem to be true for Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders.

And so what I tried to do is just some very basic correlations. You know, what is the correlation between the amount of the pesticide used and the percentage of these ethnicities?

And basically, well, the sample size is so, so small in particular for dichloropropane, because what we really see is that it's only very few tax map keys that are actually pesticide over and over and over again. And so it's, it's really the same community that's getting exposed over and over and over again.

And so we're exploring other ways to look at these data, but these are definitely not significant. Although, I mean, a positive correlation of 0.47 is not statistically significant. But when I did plot it, it was maybe suggestive of an association if there were more data.

And these are some of the maps that I really don't expect you to be able to read at all. But to get the big picture of the red dots being 1,3-dichloropropine and the orange dots being metam sodium.

Now, the blue areas are the areas with a higher proportion of Filipino and the green areas are a higher proportion Native Hawaiian Pacific Islanders. And the purple areas are high for both ethnicities. And what I mean, just looking at it, it sort of seems like that there are a lot of purple areas underlying the pesticide dots.

But again, there's just not a lot of data. So disparities in pesticide exposure resulting in harm have been previously reported. And these seem to disproportionately impact communities that are black or indigenous or people of color or of low income.

So we confirmed that, you know, as we just saw, the intensity of the usage of 1,3-D was, was pretty high, especially even compared to California, which uses so much of this pesticide. And then we didn't really see any significant effects when you correlating 1,3-D use and Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander.

But I didn't show you that if there were more data it could be suggestive. And also the GIS maps suggests that maybe with a larger data set and more refined methods or better methods, there could be associations between these fumigants and ethnicity. But what the real question is we want to know is with health effects.

And so we'll get to that in our next phase of our research.

The real reason that I'm here today is not to actually present the data because this was just like one instance, one step towards using these data in a public health context and just to sort of try it out and see what, what were what, what we could do easily and what was more challenging.

And so what we found challenging is that, yes, we really appreciate that the state produces summaries and I know how much work that is to to standardize everything. But those summaries don't provide location.

And so even though you might know the total amount of pesticides, it's really hard for a particular community to know well, how does this impact me? How am I, you know, how do I know what I'm exposed to?

And so it would be great if there were easier, cleaner method delivered data delivered to us because requesting and cleaning the RUP data is so time consuming you really many months of work. The data cleaning requires some assumptions to be made. Then that could introduce some error.

I don't know if you know, but when the users report their pesticide usage, it's handwritten largely. There was plenty of chicken scratch on the PDFs that we received. So there are many critical fields that we had to clean. And it's important to calculate the amount of active ingredient accurately.

And then when you're trying to, you know, you have the active ingredient and there are multiple tax map keys all in the same line, it's hard to know well was it the same used in both? Do I split it in half? And so there's those sorts of assumptions that were made.

So and also I wanted to point out that the location by tax map key is not ideal for estimating exposure. And it depends on whether the tax map key represents a large area or not. I'm sure Bob will mention in a little bit.

But in California the pesticide use reporting data is to, I think it's one square mile and tax mat keys can represent a much larger area than that. And so it's hard to know whether those pesticides are being applied close to communities or farther away. There are several limitations of this particular analysis.

Of course, the quality and the accuracy of the data can affect the reliability and the validity of the analysis. And as I mentioned, the ACS data, American Community Served data, are only available every five years. And so, you know, there's a little bit of. It's hard to know whether those populations are consistent over all those years.

People move. And then we are currently in the process of seeking advice. We're working with a GIS expert from the National Disaster Preparedness and Training Center to build more refined maps. She's an expert in GIS analysis. And so we'll be building more maps and expanding the data set to include 2020 and 2021.

All the data that I showed you that was mapping was all 2019. We will also explore some of the ArcGIS tools to see if we can incorporate drift and assessing relationships and correlations just within the GIS system. And then we, of course, you know, this was a practice.

And then we'll actually try to use the health data for rates of asthma and cancer, see if those are associated with these rups. So we have just a few recommendations to make Hawaii's RUP data more useful for public health research.

Ideally, we would like location reporting that's a little more precise than TMK and we would really appreciate some sort of standardized reporting system to help standardize the data that's collected.

In particular, even if there was a form that people could use so that you could, you know, even just circle the units, because there are plenty of times when the units of the amount applied are blank. They're left blank. And so it would help to, to prompt the user.

But ideally what we would be, what would be super is some sort of electronic data collection method that would already be populated with the options because there are certain formulations that are pretty much only ever reported in gallons or only reported in pounds. And so there could be ways to make that easier.

And then also given that Hawaii already provides the statewide summaries, we sort of assume that they've already done a lot of these data cleaning exercises and it would be great if they could share those clean data with people who request access to the data.

I just want to acknowledge some of the students and the co authors who helped with this work at the Office of Public Health Studies and Department of Geography Environment. And I want to also acknowledge the Ola Hawaii grant. And that is all I have. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Dr. Weldon. Keep going so we can continue our rethink. We have Dr. Bob Gunier. Am I saying that correct? And it's online, correct. There we go.

Yes, that's right. Hi, everyone. Thank you for having me today. My name is Bob Gunier. I work at the University of California at Berkeley in the School of Public Health and have helped with pesticide exposure and health effects studies using the California Pesticide Use Report data for over 25 years now. So I'll just share my screen here.

Okay. And I'm at the Center for Environmental Research and Community Health within the School of Public Health. So I'll talk today about the California Pesticide Use Report Data System that you've heard a little bit about and the CHAMACOS Study, a study that's in the Salinas Valley near Monterey County or in Monterey County.

And it's a birth cohort that we followed for 25 years now. So just some background on the California Pesticide Use Report System. It became mandatory for all commercial pesticide applications in 1990. So that means full use, both the general and restricted pesticides. And it really includes everything.

There's tabasco, peanut butter, alcohol, all kinds of things that you wouldn't think of as a pesticide but it is reported. We began restricted use pesticide reporting in 1972, so had a similar system to what Sonny just explained.

So after hearing her talk, I'd like to say that the California Pesticide Use Data System is funded by a mil tax on pesticide sales. It is an expensive endeavor. The data is collected at the county level by the agricultural commissioners and then they transfer it to the state annually.

And the State Department of Pesticide Regulation cleans the data and does some quality checks and calculates some of these standardized things like kilograms of the active ingredient based on the product and the formulation and the percent of each active ingredient in there. So you end up with a variable, the pounds of active ingredient applied.

We also get the date, the crop that was treated, or if it wasn't a crop, it would be the site. So something like a right of way along a freeway or a golf course or structural application. We also get the application method, whether it was applied by air, ground, or other method.

And then as Sonny was mentioning, the location is reported to a square mile section for agricultural uses. And that's part of the Public Land Survey system, which I believe is only in the 48, the lower 48 states.

I'm not sure if Hawaii has that system, but it's basically a grid of the entire lower 48 states that are a square mile approximately each one. However, other uses that are not agricultural are only reported at the county level. And the locations can be requested from each county Agricultural Commissioner. But that becomes a time consuming and expensive process.

So some of the things that we've used the data for is looking at surveillance or just tracking kind of the pesticide use over time. So this figure shows the agricultural pesticide use reported in Monterey County, where the Salinas Valley is in our CHAMACOS study. And we have the kilograms applied here.

And then each different color is a different group of pesticides. So you can kind of see over time from 1999, which is when our study started, through 2021, which is one of the most recent years that data is available. You can see some trends.

For example, the red here is organophosphate pesticides and their use decreased significantly between say 2008 and 2013 or so. Then it's kind of leveled off. And the bottom one in gold here is glyphosate, which has started to increase, I'd say In the last 10 years or so, and then also leveled off.

So another way to look at this, just kind of tracking one individual type of pesticide, glyphosate over time. And we see in Monterey County that the use almost doubled between 2002 and 2018 from about 60,000, 50,000 kg to 100,000. Then, by having the location, we can also look at these changes spatially.

To see, here's a map that's showing glyphosate use in 2000. And as it gets darker red, that means more kilograms were applied. And then these little squares are the square mile sections. And then the one on the right is glyphosate use in 2018.

So you can see some of the areas further in the valley, Gonzales, Soledad, Greenfield, where the use has really increased over those 18 years. You can also use the data to compare different pesticides and their use patterns. So, on the left are neonicotinoids and on the right is glyphosate.

You see that the neonicotinoids are used more kind of in the Salinas area more heavily. And glyphosate was fairly distributed throughout the the valley. So there's some question about how, how well that just having this pesticide use data represents actual human exposures.

So there are a couple papers that have looked at using the pesticide use report data to compare with measured air concentrations. And a study in 2005 looked at methyl bromide use, which is, you probably all know, another fumigant that's similar to 1,3-dichloropropene and metam sodium.

They looked at use within a 7 by 7 square mile area and 8 week average air concentration and they found a very high correlation between these two, 0.95 with 1.0 would be perfectly correlated. So it's a very strong predictor of air levels for methyl bromide and fumigants in general.

Another paper looked at use with a three mile radius and organophosphate concentrations and found varying amounts of correlation, strongest for diazinon and weakest for malathione. Some of that depends on the physical properties of the pesticide and how volatile it is in the formulation.

People have also looked at the pesticide use data in comparison to dust concentrations from dust samples collected in homes. And there's been quite a few studies done over the years. Most are looking somewhere between 1km and 3 miles, 4km.

But I'd say the most recent ones by Madrigal here, they demonstrated that the optimal distance to summarize the pesticide use data to get the strongest correlation, it varied by pesticide. And again, that's probably the application method in formulation and physical characteristics of the pesticide.

And also investigated trying to include the crop area to refine where within that square mile it was actually applied. But that didn't substantially improve the agreement, so it might not be worth the extra effort was our conclusion. So now a little bit on the CHAMACOS cohort study.

It's in the Salinas Valley, which is known as the salad bowl of the US. It's a huge agricultural area. So we enrolled pregnant mothers. Back in 1999, we started. They're eligible if they're over 18, spoke English or Spanish. We also enrolled a second group of about 300 children in 2008 to increase our sample size.

And they met all the same eligibility criteria. And, importantly for these studies that I'm going to describe, we collected prenatal and lifetime residential history. So the address that they lived at and the dates that they moved in and out of each residence. And that's needed to do the GIS work.

And it's a very largely Mexican, Spanish speaking cohort that's poor and works in agriculture. So here's a map of California. I know, kind of hard to see, but. And this was during our enrollment period from 99 through 2001, and shows the organophosphate used throughout California.

You see a lot in the Central Valley, the Imperial Valley, and then in areas along the coast that are very agricultural. And the circle here is the Salinas Valley. You can see that the use is very high in that area where it was.

And then these little dots are our study subjects in the CHAMACOS study for where the kids were born. So you can see a lot of them here in Salinas and then a few down the valley in these smaller communities.

So this is another similar map of just the square mile sections of use and the purple dots are their residences.

And what we do is basically draw circles or buffers around the residence, which would be this black point and then summarize the amount of pesticide that was applied within usually a 1km but sometimes up to 3 or more kilometers around the home.

And we do that for each residence that they lived in for whichever time period is of interest for the study. So one study that we did looked at the prenatal use of organophosphates around the homes.

So when the moms were pregnant and the full scale IQ of the kids that was tested or assessed at 7 years of age. And we saw that for each increase, standard deviation increase in the use of the pesticide, there's about a 2, 2.5 point decrease in their full scale IQ.

It was strongest for acephate and oxydematon methyl, although all of them were in the negative direction. Similarly, we looked at other types of pesticides. So here's the organophosphates and about the 2 point decrease. But we also saw significant decreases for manganese, fungicides, pyrethroids and a borderline significant relationship with neonicotinoids.

So this kind of gets to the the mixtures issue that was mentioned earlier and that these pesticides aren't applied in isolation of the other ones. There's correlation between them and individual fields get treated with many different chemicals.

So another thing that we've looked at is the use of sulfur as a pesticide, a fungicide and respiratory function in the kids. So here's a map of the sulfur use. A lot on grapes in the southern part of the valley.

And what we found was sulfur use during the year prior to their visit within half a kilometer, one kilometer, and three kilometers at the closer distances we saw it two fold risks approximately in respiratory symptoms that were reported and two to three and a half fold increased risk for using asthma medication in the last year.

We also assessed the children's lung function at seven years and we similarly found for a tenfold increase in sulfur use within a kilometer of the home, the kids had decreased. FEV1 is how much air you can hail in the first second. FEC is your entire lung capacity.

So both of those were decreased if you live near more sulfur use. So last example I wanted to give was glyphosate use and metabolic syndrome. So we looked at glyphosate use during pregnancy and also from birth to age 5.

And then at 18 years of age did they have elevated liver, enzymes, metabolic syndrome, which encompasses all these different conditions below. And we found that there were relationships with metabolic syndrome and higher tritic glycerides in particular.

So there have been a lot of other studies published in the scientific literature that have used the California Pesticide Use Report data and have found relationships with different pesticide active ingredients and birth outcomes, childhood cancer, breast cancer, Parkinson's disease, autism, birth defects, testicular cancer.

This is just a partial, not complete list and I'm happy to provide these references if that would be useful. Then I just want to give a few examples of policy uses of the pesticide use report data.

A group I used to work with, the California Environmental Health Tracking Program, published a report in 2014 and they looked at agricultural pesticide use within a quarter mile of public schools. They found that 36% had any pesticide use.

So most of them didn't have pesticide use around them, but that the top 25% had over 319 pounds during that year applied then a quarter mile and the top 5% had 2,600 pounds applied. And then when they looked by race ethnicity, Hispanics were 91% more likely to attend a school in the top 25%.

Which if you're familiar with California agriculture, that wouldn't surprise you. So we worked on a commentary addressing the California Department of Pesticide Regulation proposal to create a 400 meter, which is basically a quarter of a mile, buffer zone around all schools.

And our conclusions were this would be the regulation be a great first step to reduce exposure, but that 400 meters may not be appropriate for all pesticides. It might be fine for, say, sulfur, but for a fumigant that is more volatile and travels further, it would need to be considerably larger.

And we also tried to point out that pregnant women are most vulnerable to pesticide exposure from what we found with our research. And California did pass regulations in 2018, I think based on the previous report.

And what, what it ended up doing was you have to notify the schools of all pesticide applications that you're going to do for the year that are within a quarter mile. And then some pesticides or application methods are prohibited within that quarter of a mile.

And this is near K through 12 schools and also daycare centers, where the young children are. The final policy example I wanted to give is a current analysis that's under review right now. It hasn't been published yet, but we looked at trends of organophosphate pesticide use and the proximity to pregnant women in 2021.

And we found overall that there was a large, over 50% reduction in agricultural organophase organophosphate use from 2016 to 2021. The permitted uses became much more restricted and found that 7.5% of all pregnancies in 2021 had lived in a residence within 1 km of organophosphate use. And again, that it was.

This percentage was higher in Hispanic, pregnant women. And that in Monterey County in particular, where the CHAMACOS study is, there was a very high percent. 50% of the pregnant women lived within a kilometer of organophosphate use. So it varied quite a bit by county. That was all I had. My email's here, if anyone.

I'm happy to answer questions. Just wanted to thank the National Institutes of Environmental Health Science and the US EPA for funding our studies and the CHAMACOS participants for participating in our study. Thank you.

Thank you, Dr. Gunier. And moving on to our final person from DoH, or we do not have someone from DoH? Okay. Yes. So with that, questions for our members in attendance. Open up to the floor.

For Dr. Weldon, if you could come up. Thank you so much for your work. And, you know, you've been working with my community, and it's. This has been work that has been a long time in gestation, I would say. And I appreciate your willingness to collaborate with hapa.

And I wanted to ask you, as you've had that experience, two things. One is how were you able to motivate people or identify people to engage in those conversations? Because our struggle in the community in the six years that I've been in office, is that there are two dynamics I think, at play. One is one of powerlessness.

They feel like they can't do anything about it. And then the other one is also that pesticides are so invisible that it's not something that is commonly talked about. So there's, I would say, a low level of education in the community that is most directly affected.

So I'm wondering first how you manage to engage those folks in this kind of sustained conversation. And then the second conversation, second question has to do with your plans for the health analysis and where you plan to get that data.

Okay. Well, in answer to the first question, I actually have to thank Hopa because they're the ones who had the connections to the community. I was very much an outsider coming into this community, and it really didn't feel right for me to be approaching them and asking them to participate in these focus groups.

They don't know who I am. They've never seen or heard of me before. And so I did rely on hapa to help with recruitment. I mean, that being said, I am helping to recruit one of the groups. Just really, the inclusion criteria was not very difficult. It really Is do you live in central Oahu?

And so I really wanted to hear from the whole area, not just specifically Wahiawa or specifically any particular neighborhood. And the second part of the question, I'm sorry, you said, oh, how do I plan to do the health analysis? There are publicly available data through Hawaii. Sorry, Hawaii Health Matters, basically. Yeah.

So it's really going to be a very ecological. I do not have any individual level data. I never plan to have individual. This is really just an exercise for what we can see overall.

Okay, thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Come back to the Senate side. Senator Rhoads.

If you don't mind. My understanding is you were trying to standardize the units of measurement for your studies, but you standardized to pounds and you standardized not to metric. That was my question.

Correct.

Isn't metric usually the, the language of science? And why would you choose to go to the.

I think to make it a little more comparable to other states.

I see. Oh, because other states use the pounds. They still use pounds. Okay. All right. Just curious. Thank you.

Thank you, Senator Rhoads. Do you have anything?

I apologize. I had to attend that finance. It was a voting period, so I missed 35 minutes. It was a key. I hope this is recorded so I can review.

Oh, thank you.

Okay, so then, kicking back. Any other questions? Any other presenters? None. Senator Rhoads, any other presenters? I have a couple. First of all, Dr. Emslem, question for you. These are just clarifications.

You made a reference to unhealthy community. Can you define that, please?

Okay.

You know, I don't think I use it as a technical term.

I'm not saying you did.

So what I was saying is that we were looking for measures of health, and we took 20 characteristics that are associated with pesticide usage.

We could find data on 11 for that west side community, and five of them fell into the unhealthy range in my mind because they were outliers in terms of the comparison to the rest of our county and state. So in those. Those conditions that we found, the five conditions that were excessive, I felt they.

They made it look like that was a somewhat unhealthy community. Higher obesity, higher diabetes, and so on.

Okay, and so that was your. Your premise that using those parameters compared to other.

Yes. And I. And a better. I mean, a clarification of what I should have said, if that's the way it came across, is they were unhealthy in the ways that we found. So those particular parameters, they were outliers whether somebody from that community would be called an unhealthy person in general, I don't.

I would hope, I would hope not to imply that.

No, and I'm not saying that you're doing that. I just. Because some of the stuff I've looked at from epigenetic potential and looking at some of our more rural areas, I was just curious on how you defined an unhealthy. So I think you and I agree on what is unhealthy. Causation. Different story, but. Okay.

So I appreciate that. Any other questions for Dr. Epsilon?

I have a quick question. Do you have a question?

Okay. This is actually for Ms. Holland.

Oh, for Ms. Holland.

Yes.

Oh, hang on.

Before we go, there is any other. For Dr. Heplsand. Did you have one?

Not the second.

Okay. All right.

Thank you. So it's my understanding that the. And I really appreciated the two very focused studies. So looking at West Kauai and then also looking at central Oahu and identifying the top 10, I would say abusers of pesticides in my area, including Dole, Sugar Land, Hale Hartung, Alun, Mac Farms, Monsanto, Greenpoint Nurseries, and Bex.

I'm wondering, have these folks been engaged with. Have you reached out to them? Has the Department of AG reached out to them? And if so, what were the results of those conversations? Why is it that they are engaging in this kind of activity?

Thank you for the question. I. I'll start by saying that that was the summaries of the 2019 statewide. So that was not just for a particular district. That was. We estimated that only those top 10 users were using 99% of the RUPs. And I believe there's like 6,000 something farms throughout Hawaii. So it was.

I was kind of trying to see where that heavy use was. You know, I have had personal conversations with some of these head people at some of the organizations, and, you know, some have actually said that they, they're trying to move those numbers, especially around the fumigants. You have to ask them about why they use.

We haven't really tried to pick that apart.

So that's something that policymakers could engage in. And then I guess my other question is, you know, so following up on that. Sugar Land, do they also have property or do they have access to ag land on Kauai or is it just on Oahu?

I don't believe so. Off the top of my head, I believe.

Because I know Dole is just in central Oahu. So Dole is applying like 205,000 pounds of active ingredients. So that's noteworthy.

Yeah, I believe that's limited to north central Oahu in those cases. Well, and just to be clear, from the numbers that we looked at, a huge chunk of that, I believe it was close to off the top of my head.

I'm just remembering, but I think it was around 188,000 of those pounds was just 1,3-D fumigant, which is that highly volatile, highly drift prone fumigant. The, it kind of skews the numbers of who's using what RUPs because such a large use of that is that specific fumigant.

So it drops dole down significantly if fumigant is removed from that. Yeah, in theory. But if that fumigant was removed from that data set, it would change and skew that number significantly.

Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

I think Department of Health. Not sure.

We don't have anybody.

They're not here. Oh, you are. Can you come forward please? Hi. And I guess I'll ask my question then you can tell us what part of Department of Health you're with, et cetera.

But I mean, I'm just curious the Department of Health's position on all of this and how you interpret the, the data and the kind of concerns raised by the American Pediatric Society. I just made that up. American Academy of Pediatrics.

And you know, I mean I think Department of Ag has one position, but their job is to work with farmers and promote agriculture. Department of Health, your job is to protect, you know, human health in the State of Hawaii and environmental health as well. And it's very different perspective. So.

And I haven't seen in my memory anything I can recall that was sort of proactive on this issue from Department of Health whatsoever.

That's partially true because we looked at our database, it's called IHERE. That's where we report all our inquiries and any complaints.

Sorry, can you just also name and position and what division you're working?

Sure. I'm Dr. John Jacob, state toxicologist at the HEER office. That is Hazard Evaluation and Emergency Response. So we looked at our database. We don't have a lot of direct phone calls or complaints or inquiry regarding pesticide use directly to our office at least.

And the few, very few that we have is from the late 90s and that's pretty much it that we are directly dealing with.

So do you view your responsibility in this arena to be only complaints based?

Not quite. Not quite. Not at all actually. So usually these calls directly go to the poison center. That's how the label on the back of those pesticide containers, they have it.

So usually they call it, they take up the call and if they can handle it, or if this is a cluster that they think it's something we need to look at from a local site, then they get to us and that's when we get involved. And that's not just restrictive pesticides.

That's even the same with heavy metals and any sort of environmental toxin.

So you view your position as just getting involved sort of after the fact of an incident being reported on a sort of regulatory level, but not, I guess when you look at the data, which is again, there's partial sounds like from the presenters. There's partially a lack of data and partially.

It's just really hard to draw a definitive correlation. But how do you take what is available and interpret it from your position?

So that is hard to make that correlation as some of the studies that we. That little bridge is always missing. So unless we know there's a direct exposure, it's really hard to draw that conclusion that it is from. Is it due to a preexisting condition or is it because of the exposure to pesticide?

So that is where it gets tricky.

I'm trying to figure out how to properly phrase this then. So I guess as a state toxicologist, I mean it sounds like you're saying without that correlation or the data or incidents being reported, you can't necessarily go to any enforcement.

But from a more proactive perspective, what would your recommendation be on a policy front given the data that is available and the potential harms? You know, what do you think of proposed increased buffer zones or some of the measures that we've seen year after year go through the legislature.

So yes, buffer zone would be great. Again, it depends on what pesticide. It's not consistent. We cannot have.

But has Department of Health submitted testimony to support those measures?

I don't think we have. I don't think we have. I could be wrong, but I don't think we have. But those are. There's so many variabilities that come. We cannot like for sulfur it was 400 meters from the presentation. But that may not be necessarily cannot be used across the board for every pesticide.

So that's where it gets a little bit more tricky. Unless we know certain field they are restricted to use. I mean I'm loosely using that term not regarding restricted use pesticides, but they have some sort of control that certain pesticides are being used. And how do I, how do I articulate it properly?

Maybe for example, a pineapple field. They only use three or four types of pesticides and we know what they are. And in which case we can kind of have an idea of what the buffer zone should be. But until we they keep switching it, then buffer zones would change it.

I hope I answer your question regarding buffer zone at least.

Kind of. I'm still curious why Department of Health has sort of declined to take a position in the past.

I cannot. I don't know how to answer that. But it's not that we don't.

Are you in? Was it Diana Felton in your position before?

Correct.

Were you working at DOH Prior?

No. No.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, thank you. Senator Rhoads, unless you've had one shot, do you want to go? Senator Lynn, do you have a question?

Yeah, please.

With our toxicologist? Yeah, please, go ahead.

So, you know, just following up on the prior speaker. So because you work for Department of Health and you don't know what the prior individual are taking a stand on in your present capacity. How about taking a stand now? What would be your stand?

Definitely. What would be depending on pesticide use or specific type of pesticide?

Pesticide use and buffers.

Buffer zone, that again, I am all for it, for the safety of the people, and that's our motto. But we need to. It's only possible once we know what pesticides are used at what field.

So how about this then? How do you define pesticides? What is the target of pesticides?

Like from a pharmacological perspective or just?

This is a definition. What is the use or the practice of pesticides? What do we use pesticides for? Would it be restricted use, general use, organic?

I'm not sure if I.

What do you use it for?

To control or eliminate or eradicate any pests.

Okay, so based on that and whether it be a buffer of 100ft above 400ft and there's drift and drift has gone into the school or drift whether one homeowner did it. Shouldn't the same apply for everybody? That the Department of Health should take a stand for the protection and safety, health and well being of the individual?

Sure, yeah. But again it's. We cannot use a consistent. We cannot use say 400 meter for every pesticide is what I'm trying to say.

Drift is drift. Pesticide kills.

Drift. The. The range of drift varies depending on the application.

Okay, so let's go back to Kauai. So in Kauai, had the complaints that happened there. Some was by big, by big businesses and some was by general use homeowners. I think, when it came down to it, both of them had drifted into the school. People got sick, people went to the hospital.

Whether or not we call it a poison center or not, shouldn't the Department of Health step in to say this occurred based on the data, whatever the wind factor was, whatever the droplet size was, and at that point, shouldn't the individual. Would it be the pesticide branch that comes in and does inspection?

And I like what she said earlier because it's hard to read some of the handwriting on the logs. I had to read my own handwriting, which is why it's great when we digitize so we can see whether or not the use or misuse of application occurs.

Based on that, what stance do you believe the Department of Health should take?

So that's. In that scenario, the buffer zone was not, clearly was not enough because the exposure already was established. So in case, in that case, we should come up with. I cannot. In that example, I can say we need to either increase the buffer zone or come up with an alternative pesticide altogether.

So would you entertain the idea of coming up with that based on the data that has been collected throughout the years to say based on whether that incident that occurred and back yourself up and maybe say, okay, if today the wind is blowing at 20 miles an hour, which it shouldn't be spring, that buffer should be set all the way back.

Or basically you shouldn't be spraying and you should be sighted and fined, whether you're using it under a commercial license or using it as a homeowner.

I'm agreeing with you. But the problem is we cannot cite someone based on the wind. We can use forecast, but, you know, there is variation.

So if a bill is proposed, I believe what the prior person asking you was, would you support or would you not support it?

In my capacity, yes, I will support it.

Okay, thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Okay, so thank you. We've got 15 minutes. Actually, 13 minutes, 12 minutes left. Does anybody have a question for DoH? Quick question, because I got a few more things.

No, I was just going to point out one thing that here is something that they call. It's like what hazmat companies call the Department of Health with guidance on a specific product. So when we go to a hazmat incident, call here for guidance. They're not really right.

We, we only have recommendations and guidelines. We don't.

They're not proactive, what we're talking about.

Which is something. We need to talk about.

Yeah. Need to look at expanding that role.

Okay. So I'll go back to Senator Rhoads for DoH.

Thanks. So are there any pesticides that you're aware of? That 100 foot buffer is enough. I understand it varies on the application and on the RUP. But is 100ft enough for any of them that you're aware of?

I can't think of anything top of my head. I can get back to you on that.

That's fine. I just was curious. Is the researcher from Berkeley still on the line?

Dr. Gunier, are you still there? Yes. Okay. Looks like he might be. Yep, there he is.

I don't know if you heard my question to our Department of Health here, but I was curious whether any of the of the pesticides that you studied, would a hundred foot buffer be enough for any of them?

I would say it's better than nothing, but all the pesticides that I've studied definitely drift farther than 100ft.

Okay. All right. Thanks. Thank you. Thanks for sticking around.

Yeah. Thank you. Okay, we're down to 10 minutes here. Thanks. DoH.

Go ahead. But I have some other. When you're done.

Yeah, I have a question for Department of Ag.

That's great. A couple questions for you. You talked about your expensive chemical analysis laboratory equipment. How often do we use it? How many samples a year are you running?

We generally take about approximately 100 samples a year. It's through gas chromatography or liquid chromatography, depending on the matrix. Right. So between the two of those, it's about totals about 100 samples.

And those samples, is that routine monitoring or is it investigative? Which one is it?

Those are only investigative samples that the lab processes.

Okay, so then you talked about the groundwater concerns. How are you monitoring that? Is it an application? Is it complaint driven? Is it your analysis driven? Where does that come in?

So in terms of groundwater, we work directly with the Safe Drinking Water Branch. We provide them with the list of, hey, these are our restricted use products. This is what we're seeing in terms of use.

And that's how some of the analysis of the RUP report provides us with partnerships and information for our partners over at HDOH and the Safe Drinking Water Branch.

So who's doing the analysis on those is DOH Correct.

The monitoring section of the Safe Drinking Water Branch.

Okay. And being sensitive on time here, is there any other questions for Department of Ag? Senator?

Great. You know, I think we've gone through this for many years, and to today, I've yet to try and understand why you guys don't have an education component on usage of pesticides in regards to any, any complaint that comes in. I know you guys do training and certification for RUPs, but what about other pesticides?

Whether we buying them off the shelf or we just buying them straight from an irrigation fertilizer supply area. Why aren't you guys teaching people through the Department of Agriculture?

So we do our education and certification section. Actually, we just initiated a program or project, whatever we want to decide to call it, and that we're reaching out to schools, we're reaching out to those who. Right.

Because the sooner we can get people to understand that this, the label is the law and you have to follow it to ensure that you're safe. So we're reaching out to different demographics to ensure that they are preemptively told.

This is how we're supposed to apply products, pesticide products, they are intended to kill things, and you have to be aware of that. So there's, you know, the kids are one direction. We've also started to initiate some discussion in terms of reaching out directly to farmers for that education and outreach.

One of the ideas that we haven't quite totally figured out how to implement is to reach out to commercial applicators. So not necessarily restricted use applicators, but commercial applicators, whether it's the housekeeping industries, janitorial services, that large user base to ensure that they're aware of pesticide use requirements.

So we are taking steps to be more proactive and some of the positions that you folks have provided will help.

With that because I literally stand by and watch a lot of these people as they apply and in their homes, like you know, take one cockroach for example. I mean I think the directions say spray one time and they literally douse them with the entire bottle.

And then now what you have in the house is just now in vacuum of this aerosol. And you know, they don't believe that that's a misuse. And then before you know, you get the baby in the house now in the hospital.

So, you know, when you look at stuff like that, I mean you have people that are just uneducated about that little label. That's what I'm wanting to focus on because then that expands out. Yeah, even there. So when they tell you to use one ounce, it's like, ah, not enough. I'll just dump four more ounces.

It is a total misuse of the labeling. And our challenge in the past many years and decades have also been trying to come up with an education component. So I really wanted to press more on that part of it. So thank you Chair.

Thanks, Senator. Rep. Did you want to add more?

I had some questions for Dr. Evslin.

Okay, so hang on a second.

Did you have one for just a quick one. Actually, you know, one of the things that I see, and I'm sorry Chair Lowen is just the maybe educating consumers on application rates. When you read like a glyphosate, it is complex to figure out what a 3 quarter percent mix is in your 4 gallon backpack sprayer.

That is not an easy task. So that might be a really good education component and maybe available in flyers in stores or like what Senator was talking about.

Okay, thank you. And that's actually a good idea to develop a cheat sheet. So it's how many ounces per whatever. So that.

Yeah. And they all seem to have these really like, like everybody is like a chemist and can figure out three quarters of a percent of how many ounces to turn it to gallons. You know, like that's chat GPT time. Okay. Rep. Good Rep.

Lord, thank you. Yeah. I have a question for you for Dr. Evslin. Sorry, we got a lot of information so just revisiting the Kind of status of the studies and the data on the low level exposure. Was it. Were there studies done that kind of definitively show there is an impact from low level exposure?

Yes.

Okay. And those were done where and with what pesticides?

Multiple pesticides across the nation. And I actually brought the paper in and I'll give it to you. It has 190 references. And they would say when the data was weaker, the endocrine dysfunction was somewhat weaker and the data that was stronger had to do with cancers. Neurobehavioral. The neurobehavioral issues.

A tremendous amount of it came out of the Chopaco study. There was a study in Columbia and there was a chamaco study in California and they showed this straight line correlation between amount of the product that they found in the mother or the cord blood and the decrease in iq.

Was that the most prevalent impact you found was the neurological impacts from.

From in the Chimocco study? Yes. Then the follow up of the Chamako studies was fascinating. They did one on glyphosate. They took the same data and they looked at it in 2023 and they said higher level of glyphosate in the urine of a five year old increased evidence of metabolic disease by age 18.

That was also a straight line correlation. It was very dramatic findings. And that just came out a short time ago. I wonder if I could make a comment off the side.

I'm going to ask you to wrap up. I want to hear your comments. Yeah, quick comment, but we've got two minutes.

Just really quick. We redid the school studies in Kekaha and we found that it was statistically significant, the developmental delay in those schools. And some dust studies were done by citizens and they showed evidence of low level klepyrifos half a mile to a mile away from the fields. We called the Department of Health, actually Dr.

Behrman, who was the district health officer and me and a Doctor from Berkeley and said, guys, you know, this is just citizens doing research. That's not the way to do research. Can you jump in here and do much more? At that time the response was this isn't really the squeaky wheel. It's not the issues that we're hearing.

It's not going to rise to the level of something being done.

And chlorpyrifos is no longer used? No.

And this was actually right around the time it was about to go out.

How long does it linger in the environment?

I don't know the answer to that. 2018 was when the bill was passed, but it was still present at that time when we called for that. And we were disappointed in that response. So what I'm saying is sometimes complaints may not make it to the right place to get into it.

It just seems like if there's definitive evidence of low level exposure leading to impact, I mean, it just seems like there could be more proactive action by Department of Health, whatever that is, whatever the appropriate action is.

Not to say that it's predetermined what we think it should be, but just that this is very much a health issue.

Okay, Chair, I'm just gonna wrap it up real quick. So thanks, everybody. Thanks for the presentation. We're on time right now. I'm gonna ask all the presenters, please send us a copy of your presentation, get them to Chair Gabbard's office, Chair Lohan's office, and Chair Kahaloa's office, so they'll be shared with the committees.

So with that, we are right at 10:40. Can I say one go real quick?

No one asked earlier, but Senator gave. Dabbard has just had the flu, I think, and wanted to send his apologies for not being here. And Rep Kahaloa had to go to a press conference that was previously scheduled. So sorry.

No, that's all great. So with that, thanks very much. Appreciate the information that you've delivered and look forward to this presentation. We are adjourn.