School bus sprayed with pesticide in Narrowmine

Thursday, 21 October 1999 10:00

A school bus full of children and its driver, Shirley Jeffery, were forced to drive through a cloud of pesticide spray drift coming from a nearby ground rig operation, only a few hundred metres from the main road, Total Environment Centre announced today.

"According to Shirley, the school bus driver, it isn't the first time the school bus had been sprayed, but this latest incident clearly illustrates that self-regulatory guidelines do not work to protect the public from exposure to toxic pesticides," said Ms Joanna Immig, Chemicals Campaigner, Total Environment Centre.

"It appears the pesticide applicator wasn't taking any notice of local requirements to notify neighbours within one kilometre of the proposed application, or to place mobile road signs to indicate spraying was in progress."

"Children are extremely vulnerable to the impacts of pesticide exposure and the government must ensure that all measures are taken to ban situations where this is likely to occur. School buses, and the routes they travel along, are obvious situations where better protection is needed to stop these incidents from occurring" said Ms Immig.

"In other countries, such as the USA, 'no spray zones' have been developed around schools and child care centres to create a buffer between spraying operations and children to protect them from pesticide exposure".

"We need to adopt strict legal requirements in NSW legislation to protect children such as the duty to notify neighbours of proposed pesticide applications, signage, and record keeping so that pesticide applicators will think twice about being slack when it comes to applying toxic chemicals near children," Ms Immig concluded.