Rio Mesa High School located int he middle of strawberry fields

Rio Mesa High School located in the middle of strawberry fields

I recently came across this article by the Center of Investigative Reporting. It highlighted the high usage of soil fumigants in strawberry fields that were close in proximity to Rio Mesa High School in Oxnard, CA. According to reports of Telone-II usage (1,3-dichloropropene), a soil fumigant used to control fungal diseases and plant parasitic nematodes, over 750,000 lbs of fumigant was used in a township in which the school resides.  This is an area of high fumigant usage, and if applications are timed improperly, the children at the school would be exposed – so the concerns have merit.

In seeing this, my first questions was: “Why did they build a school in the middle of a field in the first place?”   Continue reading