It said that the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (CDPR) had caused discriminatory harm to Latino children when it renewed the registration for methyl bromide in January 1999 without considering the effect on nearby schools, which in some cases lay immediately adjacent to the fields.

While etched into American consciousness by the photography of Dorothea Lange and John Ford's adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath starring Henry Fonda, the Dust Bowl Okies who streamed into California in the 1930s were historical anomalies.

[4] The complaint was named "Angelita C." after the mother of a student at Ohlone Elementary School in Pajaro, where it is surrounded by strawberry fields.

California has the largest agricultural economy in the country by revenue, and generated more than $46 billion in 2013 on farms that are smaller than the nationwide average.

[15] Wage theft, crippling production quotas and predatory sharecropping[15] arrangements and extremely toxic work environments have historically been routine.

Workers share rooms with up to three other people in squalid pest-infested structures whose roofs may leak or whose plumbing may not work,[12][16] Some prefer to live outdoors altogether.

[15] A 2008 study using 2005 data by the Institute of Spatial Analysis and the California Center for Rural Policy at Humboldt State found that 593 acres of agricultural land fell within a quarter-mile of Salinas schools.

The plaintiffs filed an administrative complaint about disproportionately harmful effects on non-white schoolchildren because the California Department of Pesticide Regulation received federal funds.

Arthropods, nematodes, weeds, fungi and pathogens like Verticillium dahliae, Fusarium oxysporum, and Macrophomina phaseolina can destroy a harvest.

To calculate whether or not spraying methyl bromide had an adverse effect on children in the vicinity, the OCR used data from 1995 to 2001 in the CDPR's previously developed model.

An open letter to the OCR signed by a long list of advocates in response to a 2016 proposal to loosen its accountability requirements scathingly noted among many other enforcement failures that the agency had taken "nearly twelve years" to respond to Angelita C.,[26] which by the EPA's own standards should have had preliminary findings within 180 days.

'"[28] The EPA excluded complainants from the investigation,[5] and did not notify the plaintiffs of its finding of discrimination until it announced the settlement agreement,[6] without giving any relief to Latino schoolchildren from pesticide exposure during mandatory school attendance.

[31][32] "Ongoing, systematic and widespread violations of the civil rights of residents and workers in California's farmworking communities, both through actively discriminatory policies that cause disproportionate harm, but more pervasively through failure to investigate, to protect and to enforce existing state laws and regulations,” have occurred, according to Jane Sellen of the Environmental Health Sciences Center of the University of California at Davis.

[33] A lawsuit filed March 29, 2024 in Monterey Superior Court against the California DPR and the Monterey County Agricultural Commissioner by Earthjustice on behalf of the Pajaro Valley Federation of Teachers, Safe Ag Safe Schools, Center for Farmworker Families, Monterey Bay Central Labor Council and Californians for Pesticide Reform alleged that students at three schools in the Pajaro Valley—including one named in the original Angelita C. complaint—are exposed to more than twice the levels of 1,3-dichloropropene (1,3-D) that the CDR has said was the maximum safe dose, yet the DPR continues to routinely approve applications for further use of the chemical.

Estimates of risk due to the length of the workday; "exposure during tarp removal is completely uncharacterized," they said, and "air filtering respirators are inappropriately relied on and respiratory protection factors are overestimated."

"[38] A 2015 review by the Center for Public Integrity of 265 complaints submitted to the civil-rights office found that "settlements are rare, investigations often cursory and findings of discrimination all but non-existent.

Quoting Rudolf Virchow's observation that “Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing else but medicine on a large scale” Seth M. Holmes noted in his study of migrant farmworker health that "the nexus of political economic structures driving migration with legal structures barring entry to immigrants and widespread anti-immigrant sentiments proves unhealthy and dangerous."

At a 2006 hearing of the House Committee on Agriculture's Subcommittee on Conservation, Credit, Rural Development, and Research, EPA Assistant Administrator James B Gulliford of the Pesticides and Toxic Substances branch was aggressively questioned by Congressman Bob Etheridge of North Carolina about methyl bromide and critical use exemptions.

[45] Joe Schwarz of Michigan wanted to know "...why we are not doing more to perhaps try to extricate at least partially from our obligations under the Montreal so that agriculture can use methyl bromide in greater volumes than it is now."

He added that methyl bromide "was introduced over 70 years ago and there is no real evidence that there is any kind of a health hazard for humans or there is any runoff because of the gas.

"[46] After the EPA issued a preliminary finding against the CDPR on April 22, 2011, it began private settlement discussions with the defendant, to which the complainants were not invited.

[50] A spokesperson confirmed that grower pushback in the public comment period had led the department to drop a requirement to give 48 hours notice before spraying.

It is practically odorless, even at lethal doses, and can cause headaches, mental disturbances, nausea, vomiting and lung edema.

[53] The US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) considers 1,3-Dichloropropene (1,3-D), sold under the brand name Telone, a carcinogen.

Telone was also for years contaminated with 1,2,3-trichloropropane (TCP), another extremely potent carcinogen that persists for centuries, even though the label claimed it had no inert ingredients for the "sales advantage", according to filings in some of the ensuing litigation.

[55] California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) set a maximum safe exposure level of 0.04 parts per billion in June 2023.

Draft regulations DPR published in November 2023 set the level to 0.56 ppb, 14 times higher than its own employees had said was the maximum safe dose.

[58] US EPA re-approved chloropicrin (PS) in 2008 as safe for use in agricultural settings, stating that treatments "can provide benefits to both food consumers and growers.