Diana Pham
April 20, 2015
1:33 PM
Santa Cruz County has mountains that help circulate and maintain air quality but in inland areas such as Scotts Valley, with little mountain ranges, air quality is much lower. Pollutants such as ozone, O3, tend to accumulate more than in areas with mountain ranges. The city of Scotts Valley is concerned for their local air quality and even though their amounts of O3 did not exceed the California state standard of O3 at the time (2006), the city of has proposed measures to tackle the concern of increasing O3 levels in the future. Since O3 is a product of nitrogen oxides (NO2) reacting with reactive organic gases (ROG) in sunlight, the city planned to reduce these reactants before it even forms into the O3 pollutant. The city government planned to fund projects that would reduce the ROG contributed from motor vehicles. Some of these plans included funding ridesharing programs, bike facilities, and improving traffic signal timing. These proposals were issued in 2008 as well as other air quality improving proposals in collaboration with the North Central Coast Air Basin (NCCAB).
With the increasing concerns of ozone layer depletion, some of the chemical pesticides known to deplete the ozone layer in agriculture have been substituted. This substitution has pushed the problem from ozone depletion to concern for the local community’s overall health due to hazardous pesticide use. In Watsonville where agricultural fields are common, a local Watsonville elementary school, Ohlone Elementary School was expressing their concern for the use of methyl iodide, a pesticide substitute for methyl bromide, a chemical known to deplete the ozone layer. The elementary school is just 30 feet away from an agricultural field that uses this pesticide to treat their strawberry fields. Some of the teachers as well as scientists questioned the EPA’s (Environmental Protection Agency) acceptable standards of the use of methyl iodide when agencies such as The California Department of Pesticide Regulation labeled the chemical as highly toxic and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Centers for Disease Control stated it as carcinogenic. Teachers and parents expressed concerns of the children’s exposure as well as the local community and their families to this chemical. The local community worked together with local unions and got the support from state legislator to create an uproar against Arysta LifeScience, the company that sells methyl iodide as a pesticide. As a result, Arysta announced that they would no longer sell the pesticide, methyl iodide, to the U.S. (2012). Their next concern is what kind of pesticide would these agricultural growers use next. This is an example scenario where attempting to resolve one environmental catastrophe (ozone depletion) delegates problems to another concern in this case health. Substituting the ozone depleting pesticide, methyl bromide, to one that doesn’t deplete the ozone layer, methyl iodide, affected not only food (agriculture), it also affected public health and migration because Arysta, the company that sells methyl iodide pesticide, plans to move onto Mexico shifting the problem elsewhere.
Sources and References:
- Bacon, David. “Watsonville Teachers, Students Challenge Methyl Iodide.” People’s World 9 Jul.
2012. http://peoplesworld.org/watsonville-teachers-students-challenge-methyl-iodide/
- City of Scotts Valley, “Scotts Valley Town Center Specific Plan Initial Study”, February 2008.
http://scottsvalley.org/downloads/town_center/Scotts%20Valley%20Town%20Center%20Initial%20Study.pdf
http://www.scottsvalley.org/downloads/town_center/4.2%20Air%20Quality.pdf
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Leslie Sibrian
May 19, 2015
11:19 AM
Ozone depletion is a catastrophic phenomena that has been observed since the late 1970s. It involves a steady decline in the volume of ozone in the Earth’s stratosphere (ozone layer) and it also involves a larger springtime decrease in stratospheric ozone around the Earth’s polar regions. To put it simply, ozone layer depletion is the wearing out of the amount of ozone in the stratosphere.
One of the major leading causes of ozone depletion is the use of soil fumigants. The most heavily used soil fumigant in our Santa Cruz, CA bioregion was called methyl bromide. For years, this fumigant was the top choice for our strawberry farms. However, it is much to blame for our ozone depletion. When methyl bromide is released in the lower atmosphere, a fraction gets transported into the stratosphere where it leads to a series of chemical reactions that lead to stratospheric ozone depletion. By continuing the use of methyl bromide in our Santa Cruz bioregion, the future trend would be a huge ozone loss up in the stratosphere, leading to more ultraviolet light penetrating the Earth’s atmosphere, leading to increases in skin cancer. So there would be a number of health and environmental concerns, not only in our own bioregion, but also everywhere else! Fortunately, methyl bromide has been phased out under international treaty due to these concerns.
Now, our Santa Cruz bioregion uses the less severe fumigants, methyl iodide and chloropicrin, but under very strict limits. Although these pesticides are slightly better, there is still a risk in ozone depletion in their use. That is why environmental and public health advocates still see a future where all toxic fumigants are phased out.
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