AB 1603 is passed by Senate Committees— Requires PFAS Pesticide Use Reporting

AB 1603 (Shultz) advanced through the Senate Environmental Quality and Agriculture Committees but is now weakened by industry-driven amendments. Critical provisions—phasing out PFAS pesticides within eight years and designating them as restricted materials—were removed. The bill now only requires that the Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) report PFAS pesticide use, allowing new registrations and no future ban.

PFAS pesticides are not essential; crops can be grown without them. Yet 2.5 million pounds of these toxic “forever chemicals” are used annually on California farmland, linked to serious health harms, accumulating in our bodies, and persisting in the environment.

Nevertheless, the identification and quantification of PFAS pesticides is an important step toward awareness for growers, regulators and consumers alike, and we urge the California Senate to pass this important bill.

Is DPR doing its job?

Join us on August 11 in Sacramento

We encourage you to attend the Joint Oversight Hearing by the Senate Environmental Quality and Assembly Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials Committees where legislators will examine whether the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) is meeting its mission to protect public health and the environment.

Putting Public Protection First:

Is California’s Pesticide Program Achieving its Purpose?

August 11, 2026

1:30 pm–3:30 pm

Capitol Annex Swing Space Room 1100

1021 O Street, Sacramento [view map]

CPR Co-Director Angel Garcia, and CPR Steering Committee members Anne Katten (Pesticide and Work Health and Safety Project Director, CRLAF) and Bianca Lopez (Co-Founder, VIP) will be testifying.

There will be opportunity for Public Comment.

Reject the Farm Bill and Restore Accountability for Pesticide Manufacturers!

On April 30, the US House passed the 2026 Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026.

Thanks to advocacy from many of you, a bipartisan group of House members removed the bill's most extreme pesticide provisions, including language that would have shielded pesticide manufacturers from legal liability and limited states' ability to adopt stronger pesticide protections.

Unfortunately, shortly after those harmful provisions were removed from the Farm Bill, in Monsanto Co. v. Durnell the US Supreme Court gave pesticide manufacturers immunity from lawsuits for failing to warn their customers about potential significant health hazards associated with their products when the U.S. EPA had approved a pesticide label without requiring the warning. But pesticide manufacturers often possess or generate safety information that is not fully reflected on U.S. EPA-approved labels and therefore should remain responsible for warning users when they know, or should know, of significant health risks associated with their products.

So what does the landscape look like now?

The House and Senate versions of the Farm Bill still contain several troubling provisions that would:

• permanently exclude certain pesticides—including genetically engineered materials, biostimulants, plant regulators and so-called "inert” ingredients—from human health and environmental safety reviews under the Federal Insecticide Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA)
• weaken science-based pesticide review and environmental protections
• undermine Endangered Species Act safeguards
• delay review of hundreds of pesticides for harms to human health, endangered wildlife and endocrine disruption until 2031
• fail to restore SNAP benefits
• divert $100 million from the Conservation Stewardship Program
• provide inadequate support for local food resiliency efforts
• do little to address the needs of California's small-scale, beginning, and diversified farmers.

On the positive side, U.S. Representatives Chellie Pingree (D-ME) and Thomas Massie (R-KY) have introduced the People Over Poison Act, H.R. 9528 in the House, and other members of Congress have announced plans to pursue additional legislation to effectively overturn the Supreme Court's decision in Monsanto Co. v. Durnell.

Contact your Senators and urge them to:

• Reject the proposed Farm Bill
• Pass a clean one-year extension of 2018 Farm Bill
• Support legislation that overturns the US Supreme Court’s terrible Durnell decision and ensure pesticide manufacturers can be held accountable for failing to warn their customers of the hazards of their products

📞 Call and make sure to identify yourself as a constituent:

Senator Adam Schiff (202) 224-3841

Senator Alex Padilla (202) 224-3553

📣 Make your Voice Heard by July 28!

DPR's Proposed Enforcement Response

The Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) is proposing amendments to California’s pesticide enforcement regulations, which govern how County Agricultural Commissioners (CACs) address pesticide use violations. According to DPR, the proposed actions aim to improve consistency across counties, set clear guidelines for violations and penalty amounts, increase accountability for serious and repeat violators, and require annual DPR enforcement reporting.

However, the proposed fines for some violations are still much too low to be a deterrent. For example, DPR is proposing to raise the minimum fine for moderate violations from $250 to $300, or to allow Decision Reports instead of fines in some instances. Moreover, the fines for some very important pesticide use reporting violations, such as school pesticide list notification, still trigger minor, $50-$400 optional fines. 

✍🏽Submit your Written Public Comment by July 28

• Online Portal
• Email: dpr26002@cdpr.ca.gov

🙋🏽Attend a Virtual Public Hearing to offer your oral and/or written comments

DPR Must Act: Cancer-causing Fumigant Surpasses Threshold

Between 2024 and 2025, state monitoring data show that annual average concentrations of the cancer-causing fumigant 1,3-Dichloropropene (1,3-D, commonly known as Telone) increased at four of six DPR Air Monitoring Network (AMN) sites. In Parlier, Fresno County town that is 97% Latine, average levels exceeded DPR’s one-year action threshold of 0.27 ppb by 31%, raising serious public health concerns.

Under state regulations (Title 3 CCR §6448.4(b)(2)), DPR must assess whether these elevated levels were higher than expected and, if so, outline corrective actions and a timeline. However, DPR has yet to communicate their findings to the community as well as their plan for corrective actions.

It's especially troubling that these exceedances were measured in the year after DPR's new 1,3-D regulation for residential bystanders took effect, which requires growers to use specific application methods designed to reduce emissions. The CPR coalition has strenuously argued for increased protections, and is currently in litigation to compel DPR to improve its regulations.

“DPR needs to take a hard look at why air levels rose at more than half of their air monitoring sites after new regulations were put in place,” said Anne Katten with California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation.

CPR and Clearya Partner to Put Pesticide Data in the Hands of San Joaquin Valley Communities

Big news: with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, CPR is partnering with the consumer product app Clearya to analyze the health effects of agricultural pesticides



For years, Clearya has made sense of chemical data in millions of consumer products. Now they plan to analyze something new: California's pesticide-use records, which are challenging to gather, interpret, and use in a timely manner.

Starting with data from the San Joaquin Valley, their platform, Clearya Insights, will collect them, standardize them, enrich them with specially trained AI, and add safety context from authoritative scientific sources. The result will be data that communities, growers, researchers, and agencies can more easily work with.