Mmm, fresh, red, plump, juicy strawberries. You know what tastes really great with them? It’s a secret I learned as a kid. Dip them in sour cream and then dip them in brown sugar. Delish. Or dip them in homemade whipped cream, or chocolate, or both. Or, if they are fresh picked, just eat them plain. But you know what doesn’t taste good with strawberries? Cancer.

Today, the scientists at Pesticide Action Network released a document called Poison Gases in the Field: Pesticides put California families in danger. It’s about tests done with a device called a Drift Catcher that monitors the air for fumigant pesticides. They gave it a try in the California town of Sisquoc to see how well local residents were protected from airborne, carcinogenic pesticides. The answer? Not well.

You see, nature doesn’t think much of commercially grown strawberries. That’s because nature doesn’t like monoculture – vast fields of a single species, year after year. So if you want to overcome nature by growing strawberries as a monoculture, you need some potent toxins to do so. And that begins with soil fumigation, a process that uses a deadly chemical to kill everything in the soil before you plant your strawberries.

The test in this case was with a soil fumigant called chloropicrin. After a soil fumigation in which all of the application rules were followed and no equipment failure occurred, scientists measured levels of chloropicrin in the air. they found that “Average levels over the 19-day period were 23 to 151 times higher than acceptable cancer risks.”