chemicals

SACRAMENTO — California lawmakers rejected legislation that would have banned pesticides with so-called “forever” chemicals from use on California’s farms, a restriction strongly opposed by the state’s billion-dollar agriculture community.

Assembly Bill 1603 by Assemblymember Nick Schultz (D-Burbank) would have phased out the use of pesticides that contain perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS chemicals, a family of compounds that can be lasting and harmful to humans.

Representatives for agricultural groups argued at committee hearings last month that banning the chemicals was an overreach that would result in higher numbers of imports of food from other states and stifle innovation in developing new pesticides.

The latest version of the bill, which will be considered when the state legislature resumes its session next month, requires the state to list pesticides with PFAS in its public database.

“I’m disappointed,” Schultz said in an interview with the Times, adding that he intends to still push to phase out PFAS chemicals.

The bill marks the latest back-and-forth over PFAS, chemicals that are found in many different consumer, commercial and industrial products and are known as forever chemicals because some of their components don’t easily break down.

State regulators and environmental groups disagree on the definition of the chemicals, making it difficult to find a consensus on regulations or health risks.

Gov. Gavin Newsom last year vetoed a bill that would have prohibited the sale and distribution of popular consumer products, including cookware, dental floss and cleaning products, that contain PFAS chemicals.

The governor, in his veto message, cited affordability concerns. At the same time, the state has passed various laws intended to protect people from PFAS, including banning them in food packaging and firefighting foam.

Studies show that exposure to certain levels of PFAS may lead to decreased fertility and developmental delays in children and increase the risk of cancers, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, and the vast majority of PFAS chemicals have not been tested for human health effects.

The Environmental Working Group, or EWG, an advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., released a study in March that found that nearly 40% of California’s conventionally grown fruits and vegetables tested contained PFAS residues, including 90% of peaches and nectarines.

The EWG, one of the bill’s supporters, uses a broader criteria to define PFAS than the state and federal authorities.

A spokesperson for California’s Dept. of Pesticide Regulation, which oversees pesticide use, said the EWG report looked at detections of the PFAS, but the state “looks at how the detections compare to federal tolerance levels.”

At a June Senate committee hearing on Schultz’s bill, EWG’s chief science officer, David Andrews, said that PFAS pesticides “fall into a regulatory blind spot.” He also said regulators, including the state, have “been inadequate with respect to evaluating immune system harm or the cumulative impacts of these very small PFAS.”

A spokesperson for the Dept. of Pesticide Regulation declined to comment on Schultz’s bill.

Taylor Triffo, a representative for a coalition of California agricultural associations, said at a different Senate hearing in June that the bill’s original language to ban new PFAS chemicals “would deny California farmers access to [the] next generation of crop protection tools that are safer, more targeted, require lower use rates and help address emerging pests and diseases.”

Representatives for agriculture groups said at hearings last month that they don’t object to the state flagging PFAS chemicals in the state database.

Nearly half of the country’s vegetables and more than three-quarters of its fruits and nuts come from California, according to the state.

Sen. Anna Caballero (D-Merced), chair of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, called pesticide use a “balance” at the June hearing before voting for the amended version.

“Part of the challenge agriculture is facing right now is pest invasion from other countries where the critters have moved on plants and in soil and have come into the state,” she said. “We’ve got to do everything, I think, we can to maintain our agricultural production, because we produce products that are produced almost nowhere else in the country.”

Isabella Quinonez, assistant director of Public Affairs at the California Farm Bureau, said her group objected to the original bill because it would have restricted products based on their chemical class rather than on a pesticide’s scientific evaluation of risk.

“We’re confident in the Department of Pesticide Regulation’s rigorous, science-based regulatory process, which includes residue studies, groundwater monitoring, and ongoing reevaluations,” Quinonez said.

Schultz told The Times he hopes to work with the Dept. of Pesticide Regulation on oversight in the coming years. He rejected any premise that there is “absolutely nothing to worry about, nothing off [with PFAS], because that’s just inconsistent with the science.”

Times staff writer Susanne Rust contributed to this report.

Published on
14/07/2026 – 13:50 GMT+2

Deputy Director-General for Trade at the European Commission Denis Redonnet told MEPs on Tuesday that the EU will step up measures against Chinese imports before the October deadline it set to protect the bloc’s market from Chinese overcapacity.

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The warning comes as Brussels started negotiations with Beijing last month to reduce its record-high €1 billion-a-day trade deficit with China, setting an October deadline for the two sides to make significant progress.

However, tensions remain high between the two trading partners, as Beijing has repeatedly threatened retaliation if the EU adopts measures closing its market to Chinese exports.

“Dialogue alone will not suffice,” Redonnet told EU lawmakers, adding that the EU needs to decide how “to protect and preserve the European industrial base.”

“We need to look at what the Chinese do. It is more than likely that we’ll have unilateral protection measures adopted atthe European Union level. So we’ll be taking various measures in parallel.”

The EU is fighting low-cost Chinese imports flooding its market and threatening its manufacturing industry in key sectors such as steel, chemicals, machine tools and electronics.

“What can we do ahead of that October deadline? We’ll look at a number of sectors, we’ll try to start rebalancing and rein in the export levels,” Redonnet said.

Quotas and tariffs to protect EU industries

To defend its steel industry, the EU doubled tariffs on certain steel imports on 1 July and reduced quotas for the sector. Similar safeguard measures could be used in other industries in the coming weeks, the senior EU official said.

He added, however, that safeguards require the backing of a majority of member states and that not all EU countries share the same interests. Some have factories directly threatened by Chinese competition, while others have industries that rely on cheap Chinese products.

“If we had to defend European manufacturing in two to three member states, we would need the backing of a majority of all member states. And those other member states may be focused on users’ interests rather than producers’ interests,” he said.

In parallel, to rebalance the situation among EU member states, the Commission is working on a solidarity mechanism to compensate those most affected by a surge in Chinese imports.

The EU executive also plans to defend the EU market product by product as China heavily subsidises its exports to the EU prompting the Commission to resort to anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties.

Last Thursday, it launched an anti-dumping probe into Chinese Peking duck producers.

Reviewing and adjusting trade defence tools is part of the mandate EU leaders gave the Commission in mid-June, asking the EU executive to engage with China while keeping all options on the table to defend the EU market.

President Trump on Thursday announced that grocery stories and air conditioning companies will be allowed to keep using high-polluting refrigerants for longer than they would have under a law he signed during his first administration.

“This was a tremendous burden, a tremendous cost,” said Trump, surrounded in the Oval Office by executives from supermarket chains including Kroger, Fairway, Neimann Foods and Piggly Wiggly. “It was making the equipment unaffordable, and the actual benefit was nothing.”

The move loosens rules meant to restrict hydroflourocarbons, a class of climate-damaging chemicals used in cooling equipment. HFCs are known as “super pollutants” because their impact on climate change can be tens of thousands of times greater than carbon dioxide during their shorter lifespans.

In the move Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency extends the deadline for companies to comply with a 2023 rule transitioning refrigerators and air conditioners off HFCs and onto new cooling technologies. Reducing these chemicals and moving to cleaner refrigerants has long been a bipartisan issue.

Trump is also proposing exemptions from a rule requiring leak repairs on large-scale refrigeration systems.

The administration framed the changes as part of its effort to bring down high grocery costs. EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said the actions will save $2.4 billion for Americans and safeguard 350,000 jobs.

“Americans who wanted to be able to fix their equipment were instead being required to buy far more costly new equipment and that just doesn’t make any sense,” said Zeldin.

David Doniger, senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the move will not only harm the climate, but U.S. competitiveness in global refrigerant markets as well.

“The EPA is catering to a small group of straggling companies by derailing the shift away from these climate super-pollutants,” he said. “The industry at large supports the HFC phasedown and has already invested in making new refrigerants and equipment, currently installed in thousands of stores.”

Danielle Wright, executive director of the North American Sustainable Refrigeration Council, an environmental nonprofit, said any perceived near-term savings from the rollbacks will be outweighed by the future costs.

“Business owners are far more worried about the escalating cost of keeping aging, high‑global-warming-potential equipment running than they are about the cost of installing new, compliant systems,” she said.

Trump dismissed the climate concerns, saying his changes “are not going to have any impact on the environment.”

He said he wants to get rid of the technology transition rule entirely in the future.