Nine states restrict when and what pesticides may be applied in schools. These prohibitions on use are important in reducing pesticide exposure. Thirteen states define, recommend or require IPM in their state pesticide laws. Children are at high risk to the adverse effects associated with pesticide exposure. Studies are numerous which document that children exposed to pesticides suffer elevated rates of childhood leukemia, soft tissue sarcoma and brain cancer.
Studies link pesticide exposure to the alarming childhood asthma rate and respiratory problems.
Because of their affect on the central nervous system, scientists increasingly are associating learning disabilities or attention deficit disorders with low-level toxic chemical exposure. The National Academy of Sciences, in its 1993 report Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children, recognized the increased vulnerability of children to pesticide exposure. The Food Quality Protection Act, passed in 1996 may result in additional restrictions on some pesticides to which children are now exposed in the schools. However, these changes are not focused on the five critical categories that are needed to stop children's involuntary exposure at school to toxic pesticides across the board. If the government were to institute these protection, it would no longer have to point to a lengthy pesticide registration and reregistration process, with often mostly incomplete data on children, as evidence of some possible future protection.