FIGHT OVER PESTICIDE EXPOSURE SHIFTS FROM FARM WORKER TO SUBURBANITE

As rapidly growing suburbs expand into cropland, battles over exposure to agricultural pesticides are said to be escalating nationwide, spurring efforts by environmental groups to reduce the dangers of dozens of chemicals linked to cancer, birth defects, infertility and neurological illnesses.

"This has moved from a farm-worker fight in the past to middle-class America taking up the battle cry -- everyday people living in suburban parts of agricultural areas," said California state Sen. Dean Florez.

A California lawsuit by Californians for Pesticide Reform and the Pesticide Action Network North America seeks to force state regulators to move more quickly to ban toxic crop chemicals.

And groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council charge in eight other lawsuits across the country that the Environmental Protection Agency has failed to regulate pesticides as required by the 1996 Food Quality Protection Act.

Doug Nelson, executive vice president of CropLife America, a pesticide trade group representing Dow, DuPont, Monsanto and hundreds of other companies, said, "This country, as much as people would like to think it could survive without these products, it can't."