Barbara Boxer: “This amendment merely says that we would limit the use of dangerous pesticide spraying here at the Capitol and on the…”

“This amendment merely says that we would limit the use of dangerous pesticide spraying here at the Capitol and on the Capitol Grounds where we have so many children and so many families visiting us every year. My amendment prohibits the routine use of highly toxic pesticides. Those are the ones that contain known or probable carcinogens. They are acute nerve toxins and others that contain highly toxic chemicals. We do permit the spraying of such highly toxic chemicals in the rare case of an emergency. If there were a sudden emergency, if there were an outbreak where we needed to go to those highly toxic pesticides, under my amendment we would be allowed to do that. But for routine spraying, we would go to the mildest forms of these pesticides, the ones which are classified by the EPA as having the greatest risk to public health. I could cite studies that show how vulnerable children are to these various compounds. Children are not little adults. They are changing; their bodies are changing. They react very badly to these toxic chemicals.”