SEATTLE - Groups of farm workers, doctors and mothers have banded together to ask the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to do more to protect children from pesticides. On Wednesday, they filed a petition, citing examples of how dangerous chemicals that had been sprayed on fields and orchards drifted into other areas, affecting schools and neighborhoods.

Janette Brimmer, attorney with Earthjustice, says most states don't do a very good job of tracking or reporting these risks, while pesticide safety standards are the EPA's responsibility.

"The goal of this petition is to get EPA to do what it's supposed to have been doing all along - analyze all the ways that children could be exposed to pesticides, including drift, and then take some protective measures."

Brimmer adds, some of the evidence in the case is from Washington.

"There are studies from the Wenatchee area showing pesticides that are just hanging around in the air where kids are living, playing, going to school - are at levels that they could be harmful; certainly at higher levels than maybe other kids are exposed to."

Earthjustice is asking the agency to set safety standards and, in the meantime, to immediately adopt buffer zones to prevent spraying around schools, parks, child care centers and homes.

Critics argue states have their own standards and enforcement for pesticide use and that the EPA already is arguing other pesticide cases in court, which may resolve some of the issues.

The petition was filed on behalf of these groups: California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, Farm Labor Organizing Committee, the Pesticide Action Network, Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste, Moms Rising, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and SeaMar Community Health Center.