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A bill in the Illinois General Assembly would require certified pesticide users—anyone licensed by the Illinois Department of Agriculture to use Limited use pesticides, such as paraquat or fumigant insecticides – to give written or email notice at least 24 hours before application to any school, child care facility or park within 1,500 feet of the application that has chosen to receive them.
According to House account 1596the notice must include the intended location and range of application dates and times, the common name of each product and type of pesticide applied, the name and telephone number of the authorized applicator, and contact information for IDA for pesticide abuse complaints.
“This is about making people aware that these chemicals are being sprayed around,” said state Rep. Laura Faver Dias (D-Grayslake), the lawmaker who proposed the bill. “They can decide how they want to move forward with that information, but I think the first step is awareness that’s not happening at all.”
The bill is currently headed to the Rules Committee, following an April 7 hearing that featured testimony from the Illinois Fertilizer and Chemical Association and the Peoria City/County Health Department. The same committee approved it last spring, but it didn’t get a vote in the House. The deadline for the adoption of the law at this session is May 31.
The notification requirement would only apply to large five-acre operations that use boom sprayers, tractor-mounted sprayers and aircraft to apply weed killers, not residential applications. Fines would range from $250 for first offenses, $500 for second offenses and $1,000 for third and subsequent offenses.
“It’s a balancing act between making sure schools, daycares, parks get the information they need and making sure it doesn’t put too much of a burden on applicators,” Faver Dias said. The bill has been amended at least twice — once to allow affected parties to opt out of notifications and once to reduce eligible areas from a half-mile from the application to within 1,500 feet of the application — to address opposition concerns.
Even with these pesticide protection laws in place, airborne transmission makes containment incredibly difficult. “Depending on the active ingredients in the products used, as well as weather conditions, pesticide drift can occur many kilometers after application,” said Sara Grantham, science and regulatory manager at Beyond Pesticides, a public health and environmental nonprofit.
“The amount of time a pesticide lingers in plants and soil can vary greatly depending on the compound,” Grantham said. “Because systemic insecticides are absorbed into the plant tissue, they stay in the plant even longer than contact pesticides on the plant surface.”
In Illinois, pesticide drift is reported through abuse complaints. Reported by IDA receiving about 120 complaints of pesticide misuse annually, with about more than half involving drift.
Illinois is not the state with the most pesticide complaints each year in the Midwest—both Indiana and Missouri reported more. However, it is one of the states trying to introduce legislation to ensure early warning systems for pesticide applications.
Even so, the Illinois Fertilizer and Chemical Association, along with five other organizations, continues to oppose the bill.
Jean Payne, a volunteer advisory member and former IFCA president, said the association would decline to comment on the bill until it comes to the House floor, but was concerned the notice period was too long.
“Weather, especially wind speed, direction and gusts, change from hour to hour and applicators can’t determine if they can safely apply according to the label 24 hours in advance, so we can’t make spray determinations 24 hours in advance,” she said.
As of April 16, strong opposition from industry-related groups has effectively stalled the bill’s progress in the state House, according to Tucker Barry, director of communications for the Illinois Environmental Council.
“When we negotiate, we try to do it in good faith and meet in the middle for a reasonable solution,” he said. “But we can’t make all the meaningful ‘givings.’ We want to pass legislation that protects people.”
Parks make Illinois unique
Nine other states have passed pesticide drift laws in recent years. Where the Illinois bill differs is the provision for parks within the spraying area.
“I don’t know of any other law that would cover public parks and playgrounds under something like this with notice,” said Rika Gopinath, manager of community policy and action at Beyond Pesticide.
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 outdoor spaces that stop the use of fertilizers, weed killers and insecticides commonly used in public parks. She said she did so because she would like to know if the parks she visited with her children had recently been sprayed with pesticides.
“If that information was readily available, that would be a key criterion for deciding where to go,” she said.
Iowa also has no law regulating the use of pesticides near sensitive areas.
Audrey Tran Lam, director of the environmental health program at the University of Northern Iowa, said there have been no recent attempts to introduce or amend existing laws to include a buffer zone for pesticide spraying in her state. Instead, bills that shield pesticide companies from lawsuits — as long as their product has a federally approved label — are is discussed in the state general assembly.
“The spirit of the law in Illinois is so important, especially given the population it seeks to protect,” she said. “Children are extremely sensitive to the impact of these pesticides… But it is critical that their life stage is protected from environmental exposures like pesticides.”
The effects of pesticide drift have also damaged plants in nearby parks.
Kim Erndt-Pitcher, director of environmental health at the environmental advocacy group Prairie Rivers Network, has been studying pesticide application for nine years. At the time, she saw more widespread reports of injury involving trees, plants and crops as more commonly used herbicides became more volatile.
“They have a really high vapor pressure and can move off plants and soil after they’re applied and can travel for miles, where they then fall out of the atmosphere and harm non-target plants,” Erndt-Pitcher said.
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PRN report for 2022 identified symptoms of exposure to growth-regulating herbicides in more than 188 plant species, including trees, shrubs, and vines, indicating evidence of particulate and vapor drift and widespread injury on public and private lands.
In addition, the network reported finding trees, flowers and other plants affected by herbicide application across the countryincluding nature reserves, state parks, orchards, schoolyards and town squares. At least one herbicide was detected in more than 90 percent of plant tissue samples collected in different environments from 2018 to 2024.
National outreach efforts continue
In addition to legislation to warn people about pesticide use, some advocates want to build strategic databases to help their state lawmakers and businesses pass laws on the issue and better predict economic fortunes.
In Connecticut, for example account was introduced in February and 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 put into these types of accounts just to collect basic data and information about sales or use,” said Max Sano, senior policy and coalitions associate at Beyond Pesticide. “We don’t necessarily have unique information about how pesticides interact with other substances in our environment, even though we know there are detections out there.”
California already has “Spray Days“, a digital notification system that alerts residents if a “restricted material” pesticide spray is scheduled to be used in the next 24 to 48 hours, which has a higher potential to harm people.
When Spray Days was launched last year, the California Farm Bureau he told KVPR the notification system could make them a target for protesters and cause delays.
But while energy has been put into notifications, Sano said more needs to be done to keep people safe.
“All this energy goes into informing, trying to ban some of these uses here and there or in this category,” Sano said, “when we really feel like there’s an existential threat to human health, from synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, is it affecting human health, the environment, and biodiversity — and especially pollinators.”
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Gabriel Matias Castilho
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Gabriel Matias Castilho reports from the Washington, DC area. He previously worked for Capitol News Illinois, covering environmental policy, energy and utilities statewide. He is currently pursuing his master’s degree at Northwestern University.
