A bill in the Illinois General Assembly would require certified pesticide users (those authorized by the Illinois Department of Agriculture to use restricted pesticides, such as paraquat or fumigating pesticides) to provide written or email notice at least 24 hours in advance of their application if they choose to pick up their application at a school, child care facility, or park within 1,500 feet of the application.
According to House Bill 1596, the notification must include the intended location and date and time range of use, the common name of each product and the type of pesticide used, the name and telephone number of the authorized user, and IDA’s contact information for complaints of pesticide misuse.
“This is to make sure people are aware that these chemicals are being sprayed near them,” said state Rep. Laura Faber Diaz (D-Grayslake), who sponsored the bill. “They can decide how to proceed with that information, but I think the first step is to recognize that that’s not happening at all.”
The bill now goes to the Rules Committee after an April 7 public hearing that featured testimony from the Illinois Fertilizer and Chemical Association and the Peoria City-County Health Department. The committee approved the bill last spring, but it did not come to a vote in the House. The deadline for passing the House bill this Congress is May 31st.
This notification requirement applies only to large-scale operations over 5 acres that use boom sprayers, tractor-mounted sprayers, or aircraft to apply herbicides, and does not apply to residential uses. The fine is $250 for the first violation, $500 for the second violation, and $1,000 for the third or subsequent violation.
“This is a balance between making sure schools, daycare centers and parks have the information they need and not putting an unreasonable burden on applicators,” Faber-Diaz said. The bill has been amended at least twice to address opponents’ concerns, once to allow affected parties to opt-in to notification and once to reduce the covered area from within a half-mile of the application to within 1,500 feet of the application.
Even with such pesticide protection laws in place, airborne transmission makes containment extremely difficult. “Depending on the active ingredients of the products used and weather conditions, pesticide spray can occur for many miles after application,” said Sarah Grantham, scientific and regulatory manager at Beyond Pesticide, a public health and environmental nonprofit.
“The length of time that pesticide residues remain on plants and soil varies greatly from compound to compound,” Grantham says. “Systemic pesticides are absorbed into the plant tissue, so they remain in the plant for a longer period of time than pesticides that come into contact with the plant surface.”
Pesticide drift has been reported in Illinois through complaints of misuse. IDA reports that it receives approximately 120 complaints of pesticide misuse each year, more than half of which involve drift.
Illinois is not the state in the Midwest with the most pesticide-related complaints each year, with both Indiana and Missouri reporting more complaints. However, the state is among the states that are introducing legislation that would provide an early warning system for pesticide spraying.
Still, the Illinois Fertilizer and Chemical Association, along with five other groups, remains opposed to the bill.
Gene Payne, a volunteer advisory board member and former president of IFCA, said the association would not comment until the bill was introduced in the House of Commons, but was concerned that the notice period was too long.
“Because the weather changes from hour to hour, especially wind speed, direction and gusts, sprayers cannot know 24 hours in advance whether it is safe to spray according to the label. Therefore, spraying decisions cannot be made 24 hours in advance,” she said.
As of April 16, the bill’s progress in the state Legislature has effectively stalled due to strong opposition from industry groups, said Tucker Barry, communications director for the Illinois Environmental Council.
“When we negotiate, we try to negotiate in good faith and meet as an intermediary to find a reasonable solution,” he said. “But we cannot make all the important ‘donations’. We want to pass legislation that protects people. ”
Parks make Illinois unique
Nine other states have adopted pesticide drift laws in recent years. A unique feature of the Illinois bill is the provision for parks within the spray area.
“I’m not aware of any other bill that would limit the scope of public parks and playgrounds to notification areas like this,” said Rika Gopinath, community policy and activities manager at Beyond Pesticides.
This vector of exposure was very important to Jen Schroeder, a mother of two who lives in Kansas City, Missouri. Schroeder worked with the city’s Parks and Recreation Department to create an outdoor space that foregoes the use of fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides typically used in public parks. She said she did it because she wanted to know if the park she frequented with her children had recently been sprayed with pesticides.
“If that information was readily available, it would have been an important criterion in deciding where to go,” she says.
Iowa also has no laws regulating the use of pesticides near sensitive areas.
Audrey Tran Lam, environmental health program director at the University of Northern Iowa, said the state has not made any recent attempts to introduce or amend current laws to include buffer zones for pesticide spraying. Instead, the state General Assembly is considering a bill that would protect pesticide companies from lawsuits (as long as their products carry federally approved labels).
“I feel like the spirit of the Illinois law is very important, especially given the population it is intended to protect,” she said. “Children are highly vulnerable to the effects of these pesticides… but it is important that their life stages are protected from environmental exposures such as pesticides.”
Plants in a nearby park are also being damaged by the drifting pesticides.
Kim Ernt Pitcher, director of environmental health for the environmental advocacy group Prairie Rivers Network, has been studying pesticide drift for nine years. During that time, she has seen damage reports involving trees, plants and crops become more widespread as more commonly used herbicides become more volatile.
“They have very high vapor pressures and can leave plants and soil after application, travel for miles, and then fall out of the atmosphere and harm non-target plants,” Erndpitscher said.
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PRN’s 2022 report identified symptoms of exposure to growth-regulating herbicides in more than 188 plant species, including trees, shrubs, and vines, and noted evidence of particulate and vapor drift and widespread damage across public and private lands.
Additionally, the network reported finding trees, flowers, and other plants damaged by herbicide drift across the state, including in nature preserves, state parks, orchards, schoolyards, and town squares. At least one herbicide was detected in more than 90 percent of plant tissue samples collected from various environments from 2018 to 2024.
National informatization efforts continue
In addition to legislation to warn people about pesticide use, some advocates want to help state lawmakers and businesses pass legislation on the issue, as well as build a strategic database to better predict economic fortunes.
In Connecticut, for example, a bill was introduced in February that would require the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to create a searchable online database to track the types, amounts, and locations of pesticides sold or used in the state.
“There’s a lot of energy going into these kinds of bills just to collect basic data and information about sales and use,” said Max Sano, senior policy and coalition associate at Beyond Pesticides. “We know that pesticides are being detected, but we don’t necessarily have uniform information about how they interact with other substances in the environment.”
California has already introduced “Spray Days,” an opt-in digital notification system that alerts residents if pesticide sprays containing “restricted substances” that are likely to cause harm to humans are scheduled to be used in the next 24 to 48 hours.
When Spray Day began last year, the California Department of Agriculture told KVPR the notification system could target protesters and cause delays.
But even with the focus on notifications, Sano said more needs to be done to keep people safe.
“All the energy is going towards notifications and trying to ban some of the uses here and there or in this category,” Sano said. “When we have real existential threats to human health, including synthetic pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, how does that affect human health, the environment, biodiversity, and especially pollinators?”
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Gabriel Matias Castillo reports on the Washington, DC area. Previously, he worked at Capitol News in Illinois, covering environmental policy, energy and utilities across the state. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree at Northwestern University.
