The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has restored Obama-era measures aimed at protecting people from pesticide exposure on and around farms, it has announced.
The measures, published in a final rule on Oct. 2, restore the pesticide Application Exclusion Zone (AEZ) requirements established under the 2015 Agricultural Worker Protection Standard (WPS).
Those requirements state that exclusion zones—areas in which bystanders are prohibited from entering while pesticides are being sprayed—must be extended to a 100-foot radius when pesticides with fine droplets are being sprayed.
In instances where medium or larger droplets are sprayed from a “height greater than 12 inches from the soil surface or planting medium,” a 25-foot radius makes up the exclusion zone, according to the reinstated rules….