Monday, February 3, 2014, 3-5pm
Maude Fife Room, Wheeler Hall
Examining the evidence, from impacts on wildlife to farm-worker children, a panel of leading experts in public health, social science, and policy will ask whether the latest research on endocrine disruption effects on wildlife and humans, the environmental justice issues associated with pesticide drift from farms, and the educational and social consequences of child exposure, can be marshaled to shift our agricultural system to one that is pesticide-free yet pest resilient. The panel will critically appraise whether new policy paradigms could be effective, whether organic and local agriculture is helping to reduce pesticide use, whether the role of corporate power in maintaining the current system can be changed, and whether universities and the government are adequately supporting research into pesticide problems and alternatives. The panel will reflect on what steps must be taken to reach for a pesticide-free world.
A panel discussion moderated by science and health journalist David Tuller, lecturer at the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.
The panel will feature:
Brenda Eskenazi, Professor of Epidemiology, School of Public Health
Eskenazi is an expert on the hazards of chemical exposures, and the head investigator on the CHAMACOS study on the effects of pesticides on generations of farmworkers.
Jill Harrison, Professor of Sociology, University of Colorado Boulder
Harrison specializes in environmental and workplace inequities in the agricultural system, and recently published a book entitled, Pesticide Drift and the Pursuit of Environmental Justice.
