--- title: "California Lawmakers Drop the Outright Ban From the PFAS Pesticide Bill" description: "AB 1603 was written to prohibit PFAS pesticides in California by 2035. After opposition from farm groups and chemical manufacturers, what survives is disclosure, a halt on registering new PFAS pesticides, and a public list." category: "California" category_url: https://herald.la/category/california author: "Elias Rosen" published: 2026-07-31T01:52:20.000Z updated: 2026-07-31T01:52:20.000Z canonical: https://herald.la/article/california-lawmakers-drop-the-outright-ban-from-the-pfas-pesticide-bill tags: ["pfas", "pesticides", "agriculture", "sacramento", "environment"] --- # California Lawmakers Drop the Outright Ban From the PFAS Pesticide Bill AB 1603 was written to prohibit PFAS pesticides in California by 2035. After opposition from farm groups and chemical manufacturers, what survives is disclosure, a halt on registering new PFAS pesticides, and a public list. The bill that would have made California the first state to ban PFAS pesticides outright is still moving through the Legislature. The ban is not. Assembly Bill 1603, introduced in January by Assemblymember Nick Schultz, a Burbank Democrat, originally proposed prohibiting the use, sale and manufacture of pesticides containing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances from 2035, with an earlier 2030 date for the 23 such chemicals already banned in the European Union. Under pressure from the pesticide industry and agricultural groups, Schultz agreed to strip those sections out in order to move the bill through the Assembly. ## What is left in the bill The version now in the Senate, amended on July 8, [is a transparency and gatekeeping measure rather than a prohibition](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1603). It would: - bar the Department of Pesticide Regulation from registering new pesticides containing PFAS ingredients, unless the application was submitted before January 1, 2027; - require pesticides containing PFAS to be flagged as such in the state's pesticide use reporting database, with PFAS added as a tracking category; - require PFAS usage trends to appear in the department's annual reports; and - require the department to publish a list of every registered pesticide containing PFAS ingredients and distribute it to county agricultural commissioners. As passed by the Assembly, the bill also required growers to obtain county permits before applying the chemicals. The bill was re-referred to Senate Appropriations. The practical difference is straightforward. Nothing currently in use comes off the market. What changes is that the state, the counties and the public would know where these chemicals are being applied, and the pipeline of new ones would close. ## Why supporters wanted more The push came from advocacy groups, chiefly the Environmental Working Group, which has produced most of the California-specific data in this debate. EWG's testing [reported PFAS pesticide residues in about 37 percent of 930 samples of non-organic California-grown produce](https://www.ewg.org/research/forever-chemicals-contaminate-nearly-40-non-organic-california-grown-produce), with the highest rates in stone fruit. The group's analysis of state pesticide use data put annual application at roughly 2.5 million pounds of PFAS pesticides on California crops. EWG is a party to this fight rather than a neutral referee, and its numbers should be read as its own findings. They have not been contradicted by state agencies, and they are the reason the bill exists. The underlying health concern is not disputed in the same way. PFAS compounds resist breaking down in the environment and in the body, which is why they are called forever chemicals, and [research has associated exposure with effects on the kidneys, liver, thyroid, immune response and fetal development](https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08042026/california-bill-could-ban-pfas-pesticides/). What is contested is which specific pesticide compounds should count as PFAS, and at what exposure the risk becomes actionable. ## Why the industry objected The California Farm Bureau, with a coalition of agricultural and commercial groups, [opposed the original bill](https://www.cfbf.com/ag-advocacy/advocacy-updates/newsletter-content/april-10-2026/ab-1603-broadly-restrict-pfas-in-pesticides) on the grounds that a statutory ban would bypass the state's existing science-based registration process, in which the Department of Pesticide Regulation evaluates individual products. Growers argued that several of the affected compounds are working crop-protection tools with no ready substitute, and that a legislated cutoff date does not account for whether a replacement exists by then. That is a real argument about how chemicals should be regulated, and it is the one that won this round. Whether the disclosure requirements that survived produce enough public data to reopen the question is the thing to watch when the Legislature returns to it. ## Sources - [AB-1603 Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS): Department of Pesticide Regulation](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1603) - [California Bill Could Ban PFAS Pesticides](https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08042026/california-bill-could-ban-pfas-pesticides/) - [AB 1603: Broadly restrict PFAS in pesticides](https://www.cfbf.com/ag-advocacy/advocacy-updates/newsletter-content/april-10-2026/ab-1603-broadly-restrict-pfas-in-pesticides) - [Forever chemicals contaminate nearly 40% of non-organic California-grown produce](https://www.ewg.org/research/forever-chemicals-contaminate-nearly-40-non-organic-california-grown-produce)