It causes havoc with the central nervous system, but this farm chemical is barely regulated

The cloud was moving in Rachael Woodard’s direction so slowly, she and a fellow gate attendant at the Bena landfill took out their cameras and snapped photos. It was that unusual, that ominous a sight.

Had they fully grasped the danger, they might have immediately abandoned their posts at the county dump and made a run for it.

But the cloud of gas — an insecticide that drifted from an adjacent orange grove — overtook them last Saturday with unexpected speed, and within seconds Woodard and several others were gasping for breath.

A county haz-mat team was immediately dispatched to the landfill about 15 miles southeast of Bakersfield. Detox workers tried to get Woodard to remove her contaminated clothes, but she could barely move. They did it for her.

In all, six employees of the county’s waste management division were treated for exposure, having reported nausea and vomiting, heartbeat irregularities and breathing difficulties. Woodard was taken to Mercy Hospital with a highly elevated heart rate.

What was this chemical, this poison with such neurological power it can render a healthy young woman unable to move and barely able to breathe? Some battlefield remnant from World War I?

Nah, it was just good, ol’ Nufos, an insecticide so common (and supposedly benign) that growers don’t even need to notify the county ag commissioner in advance of their intention to apply it, as they must with certain other chemicals.

Nufos’s active ingredient is chlorpyrifos, a neurotoxin that has been the subject of controversy almost since its first commercial availability in 1965. Certain commercial formulations were banned in the U.S. for several years, starting in 2000, because of suspected links to childhood leukemia and disorders of the reproductive and immune systems.

This stuff is scary, and it’s everywhere, in a stunning array of grocery- and hardware-store items. Among them are various products in the pet flea-control aisle. Chlorpyrifos-based anti-flea drops resulted in 44,000 complaints last year, and the EPA is investigating.

In 2003, its maker, Dow Chemical, was subjected to the largest penalty ever administered in a pesticide case, $2 million, and required to stop advertising Dursban, a household version of chlorpyrifos, as “safe.”

In 2007, a coalition of farmworker and advocacy groups, citing health concerns, filed suit against the EPA trying to end agricultural use of the chlorpyrifos. The following year a federal judge imposed 1,000 foot buffer zones around waterways, banning the aerial application of chlorpyrifos within that range.

That’s certainly good news for fish.

Meanwhile, growers can still spray the stuff on crops almost anywhere in California with few restrictions.

Woodard, who was placed on two days’ bed rest, per doctor’s orders, spoke to ag commissioners’ investigators Wednesday and was back at work Thursday. On Friday, she was back at Bena.

No word yet on whether the grower, Gless Ranch, will face any kind of sanctions. The ag commissioner’s office, which has the power to levy fines, said the investigation could take a week or more.

Woodard’s mother, Paula Woodard, now wonders what else is drifting past our noses (hopefully much more diluted than the chemical overspray that sickened her daughter) here in agriculture-rich Kern County.

“I just want to know why we don’t have the right to unpoisoned air,” she said. “Something’s wrong.

“The farmer said the chemical was not toxic, but all his workers were wearing hazmat suits while they were spraying it. It makes you not trust whoever’s making the regulations.”