High profile Greens MLC Sue Higginson joined community groups and residents outside Dubbo Base Hospital recently to raise awareness about passive chemical exposure from agricultural poisons across the region.

The group called on the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) to commence baseline evidence gathering to establish the likely threat to human health as a result of passive chemical exposure.

“The sheer scale of the evidence that agricultural poisons are present in Dubbo and Narromine is shocking, and worse, this has been going on for decades,” The Greens’ spokesperson for agriculture and the environment said on Thursday, April 30.

“There is barely a street in Dubbo that doesn’t have a tree dying from the top down as these chemicals blow across town from season to season,” she added.

“It was only because of community pressure that the EPA started air quality monitoring in more rural areas around the Central West – and those tests have demonstrated widespread detections of banned chemicals and other chemicals that affect human development, cancer rates and reproductive health.”

Ms Higginson called on the EPA to act in the interests of community health and safety.

“We have a right to know the chemicals that are settling on the trees and streets of Dubbo and Narromine, and the concentrations that people are being exposed to.

“This is not just a local issue. The knock-on effects of the entire Central West being exposed to invisible poisons are harmful for our food systems, water health, and the natural world that is essential for humans to live and thrive,” she added.

Community Overspray Groups NSW spokesperson Bruce Maynard said the EPA has recorded numerous instances of a range of chemicals in the air and vegetation in the Orana Region and beyond.

“We are repeating what we have been asking the EPA for since 2018 and that is, adequate investigations need to happen into every vegetation pollution notification from the public,” he said.

Healthy Rivers Dubbo spokesperson Mel Gray said the landscape-wide impact of agricultural poisons on the environment cannot be underestimated.

“The EPA has established that these chemicals are turning up where they shouldn’t be, and they’ve said they need to do more work… The time for that work is now; it’s urgent,” she said.

Ms Higginson said Narromine Shire Council has already passed a motion requesting air quality monitoring in Narromine and suggested Dubbo Regional Council follow suit.

“We can see there are chemicals falling in these communities, [so they] have a right to know how they are being exposed,” she concluded.