TREMONT, Ill. — On her 43 acres of woods and reclaimed native prairie in rural Tazewell County, Katie VandenBerg walked the edge of her property, inspecting a line of oaks bordered by miles of corn and soybean fields.

The oak leaves are curled and stunted — damage she believes is tied to pesticide applications on nearby farms. 

Since buying the land three years ago, VandenBerg, whose family has lived in Tazewell County for seven generations, said she has “gone down a rabbit hole” trying to understand how drifting chemicals are affecting her trees.

Then, this spring, that threat reached her 10-year-old daughter, Genevieve.

Hundreds of children had gathered outside Bethel Lutheran School in nearby Morton for a jump-rope fundraiser when a chemical odor swept across the parking lot. Across the street, according to Illinois Department of Agriculture records, farmer Mark Eigsti was spraying pesticides on his soybean fields as wind gusts topped 19 miles per hour. These kinds of conditions are known to increase the risk of drift — when chemicals move beyond their intended targets.

That evening, parents received an unusual message from the school principal: “Showers for All Tonight.”

For VandenBerg, the email was immediately alarming.

“Well, hold on. This is more than just showers for everybody,” she said. “This is a big deal. This is not OK.”

Commercial pesticides are being detected in public spaces like schools and parks, according to recently released research by Prairie Rivers Network, an Illinois-based nonprofit that advocates for water health. ​In addition, environmental advocates say Illinois ​doesn’t have an established method to track ​agricultural pesticide drift and ​lacks the regulations to prevent exposure like what occurred in Morton. 

One of the main problems with determining the extent and dangers of pesticide drift in Illinois, advocates say, is a system that largely responds only after harm is reported.

“People have a right to know because these chemicals don’t stay put,” said Amy Doll, executive director of Friends of the Illinois Nature Preserves. “This isn’t a farmer issue. This is a chemical industry issue.”

‘So far behind’

After receiving the email, VandenBerg rushed her daughter into the shower, sealed her clothing for testing and filed a complaint with the state Agriculture Department that same night. Eight others filed complaints, according to the agency’s records obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests.

The day after the incident, state inspectors collected samples from the site, including Genevieve’s clothing. Testing detected traces of the herbicides Glory 4L and Trifluralin 4EC, classified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a possible human carcinogen. 

In the days that followed, students and staff reported headaches, sore throats, skin irritation and red eyes, according to state Agriculture Department interviews. Investigators later concluded that more than 200 children and staff were exposed. 

While her daughter has not experienced lasting health effects, VandenBerg worries about what remains unknown.

“She’s a 10-year-old girl, and someday she wants to be a mom,” she said. “You never know how these things affect people’s long-term health.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics has warned that children may be especially vulnerable to pesticide exposure, citing links between early-life exposure and developmental and behavioral issues. But researchers say major gaps remain in understanding the long-term impacts of both acute and chronic exposure.

“That’s the big question for a lot of families,” VandenBerg said. “What are the long-term effects of kids literally getting drifted on?”

Last month, the state Agriculture Department fined Eigsti $250,000 and revoked his pesticide applicator license, citing violations of the Illinois Pesticide Act, including spraying in excessive wind.

Eigsti appealed the penalty at an Aug. 4 hearing and has a follow-up appearance scheduled for Sept. 1. He did not respond to repeated requests for comment. 

Under Illinois law, none of the $250,000 fine will go to affected families. The money is instead directed to the state’s Pesticide Control Fund, which supports public education on proper pesticide use and covers enforcement and inspection costs. Some environmental advocates say those funds should pay for research into exposure risks.

“We’re just so far behind on researching the impacts,” said Lindsay Keeney, chief programs officer for agricultural conservation at the Illinois Environmental Council, a nonprofit advocacy group focused on environmental legislation. “What are our children being exposed to?”

A lack of routine pesticide air monitoring leaves Illinois without a clear picture of how frequently agrochemicals move through communities, said Kim Erndt-Pitcher, director of ecological health for Prairie Rivers Network.

“If the Department of Agriculture and EPA aren’t looking for it and no one is documenting it, how can you say it really exists?” said Erndt-Pitcher. “We’re documenting it, and we’re saying it does.”

The nonprofit began receiving increased reports of damaged trees and gardens around 2017, the same year soybeans resistant to the weedkiller dicamba were introduced in Illinois. Dicamba has been linked to colon and liver cancers, according to reports from the National Institutes of Health. 

It was banned twice by federal courts, once in 2020 and again in 2024 for damaging neighboring crops and ecosystems. In February, the Trump administration’s EPA approved the use of over-the-counter dicamba for soybeans and cotton for the next two growing seasons. 

Though designed for crops engineered to tolerate it, dicamba is widely considered a volatile herbicide because of its tendency to drift.

“Dicamba is a notorious bad actor, but so are a lot of the pesticides we’re using,” Erndt-Pitcher said. “They’re traveling (farther) than most people think.”

After finding little statewide monitoring data, Prairie Rivers Network launched its own monitoring effort. Over six years, researchers detected herbicides in more than 90% of 127 plant tissue samples they collected from a variety of sites.

Those findings were published in a 2024 report. An addendum was released earlier this year focused on parks and schools to determine whether pesticides were reaching public spaces. Between May and September 2025, prairie network researchers tested 10 locations across the state, from Winnebago County in the north to Union County in the south. They detected pesticides over 200 times and found 18 different kinds of pesticides at the sites. 

“We’re seeing all of these sites everywhere we go are not just having one drift event; they’re having multiple drift events,” Erndt-Pitcher said. “There’s really not much difference between exposure at a site that’s 110 feet away and one that’s 3,000 feet away.”

The study found that distance from agricultural fields was not a reliable predictor of exposure as parks and schoolyards both near and far from agricultural fields experienced repeated exposure events, with the farthest drifting more than three-quarters of a mile. 

High-risk, volatile chemicals like dicamba, 2,4-D and atrazine were detected at most of the sites. While the U.S. EPA does not classify these chemicals as carcinogens, international health organizations list 2,4-D as possibly carcinogenic and atrazine as a probable carcinogen. 

Doll said these findings demonstrate that pesticide drift is not confined to agricultural fields and proves that more awareness and regulations are necessary to curb the widespread presence of pesticides in public spaces across the state. 

“It’s not just happening on trees in the middle of a nature preserve,” she said. “These chemicals are showing up in places where we as a community and our children play and go to school.”

A complaint-driven system

The Morton case also underscores a key limitation of Illinois’ oversight system: Without air monitoring or notice requirements, most pesticide-use investigations begin only after a complaint is filed.

The Agriculture Department process requires residents to recognize a potential pesticide exposure, know how to report it and gather enough information for regulators to act.

“Katie (VandenBerg) knew what to do,” Erndt-Pitcher said. “But how many times are people at a park, they smell something, and they just don’t know what to do?”

Advocates say that reliance likely leaves many incidents unreported — especially when residents can’t identify the source or aren’t sure the exposure poses a risk. Pesticides can travel miles under windy conditions, complicating enforcement.

“It’s very hard to trace where that came from or pin down which farmer it was,” Keeney said.

Social dynamics in tight-knit rural communities can also discourage reporting. 

VandenBerg said complaints can feel deeply personal — she went to Morton High School with Eigsti — and some parents have hesitated to come forward.

“They’re too scared to stand up for something,” she said. “They might know the farmer, and they don’t want to upset him. Well, he shouldn’t have sprayed all of our children.”

Although more than 200 people were exposed in Morton, only nine complaints were filed.

“For the number of families affected, I was surprised how many didn’t,” VandenBerg said. “They didn’t want to rock the boat.”

Erndt-Pitcher said the system effectively shifts responsibility onto those exposed.

“It puts the (onus) on the entity that was getting trespassed,” she said. 

Advocates argue the approach can strain relationships between neighbors.

“It creates a system of conflict where my neighbor does something, and I have to go and tell on them to the big bad government in order to have some protections,” Doll said. “That is hard.”

‘Good neighbor’ bill

The Morton incident has become a rallying point for lawmakers pushing for preventive measures.

For two years, legislators and advocacy groups have proposed amending the Illinois Pesticide Act to require advance notification before spraying near schools and parks.

“This (Morton case) is literally the point of the bill,” said state Rep. Laura Faver Dias, a Democrat from Grayslake and the measure’s chief sponsor. “To make sure school leaders are informed of when pesticide spraying happens so they can be empowered to make decisions for their school.” 

The proposal would require applicators to provide at least 72 hours’ notice before spraying within a half-mile of those areas. Supporters call it a “good neighbor” bill.

VandenBerg said she believes a simple warning could have prevented the exposure — and the penalty Eigsti now faces.

“If he had just sent an email or made a 30-second phone call, it would have saved him all this grief and stress and money,” she said.

Gov. JB Pritzker’s administration has taken steps to protect children from pesticide exposure. In 2023, he signed the Pesticide Application at Schools Act, which prohibits K-8 schools from scheduling pesticide treatments on school grounds while students are present. The state has also restricted the use of dicamba.

“Governor Pritzker is proud to have overseen the establishment of the most stringent pesticide rules in the nation starting in his first term,” a spokesperson for the governor’s office said in a statement. “He looks forward to continuing to develop thoughtful policy that protects the health and wellbeing of all Illinoisans and prevents pesticide drift in our state.”

But those protections largely address pesticide applications on school grounds, not drift from nearby farmland. The proposed notification bill would go a step further, requiring agricultural applicators to warn schools and parks before spraying nearby fields.

The bill has been introduced three times but has not advanced. Agricultural groups, including the Illinois Farm Bureau and the Illinois Fertilizer and Chemical Association, oppose it, arguing that spraying decisions depend on rapidly changing weather conditions.

“Pesticide application decisions in Illinois are made based on field conditions on the day of application, not days in advance,” said Jenny Webb, president of the fertilizer and chemical association.

She said wind and weather are too unpredictable to reliably forecast even 24 hours ahead, making advance notice impractical.

Supporters say the proposal already accounts for those constraints.

“We tried to make the bill as least onerous as possible,” Faver Dias said. “It seems to me that if we’re requiring applicators to wear (personal protective equipment), then we need to make sure children are protected as well.” 

She’s considering bringing the bill back next year, and environmental groups like Friends of the Illinois Nature Preserves and Prairie Rivers Network say they will keep pushing for stronger pesticide-notification requirements. 

But Erndt-Pitcher said advance notice would only address part of the problem. Without routine air monitoring, she said, Illinois still doesn’t know how often pesticides move through the air. Integrating pesticide tracking into existing air-quality programs could help fill that gap and shift the state from reacting to incidents to measuring them in real time.

That lack of data, advocates say, has made it harder to build urgency around the issue — something Prairie Rivers Network’s research is beginning to change, Faver Dias said.

“The drift is real, even in the most perfect conditions,” she said. “Morton was a case of essentially right across the street, but we know it drifts much farther than that.”

Leading the pack

VandenBerg said she’s never imagined leaving Tazewell, putting roots down with her two kids and husband as she juggles a variety of jobs. She’s a divorce coach, a real estate owner and runs an art gallery in Morton. In her spare time, she focuses on what she calls her hobby: rewilding acres of reclaimed farmland. 

Though no one in her family ever farmed, a deep connection to the land is what pushed her to learn what she could about pesticide drift.

“It affects so much other land, not just the land that the farmers are spraying,” VandenBerg said. “It really is upsetting for me.” 

After the Morton incident, VandenBerg stepped into another role — helping parents understand how to respond to pesticide misuse. 

She began guiding neighbors on the process of documenting and filing complaints, turning her own experience into a road map for others. In the days after the incident, she called Faver Dias to stress that a pesticide notification bill is needed.

“When I first read about (pesticide drift), I thought, ‘What can I do?’” she said. “This is a very small thing that I can do. Katie Vandenberg in Morton, Illinois, isn’t going to be making too many big changes with this, but hopefully by understanding it, I can keep an eye on things, and that’s kind of how I went down this path here.” 

Advocates say her persistence has made a difference.

“Few people would have known what to do,” Keeney said. “She deserves all the accolades for being able to go through all of those steps and ensure that there were some consequences.” 

Months after the incident, VandenBerg still doesn’t know whether that April afternoon will have lasting consequences for her daughter.

“I hope this is the end of it,” she said. 

But VandenBerg said she believes the incident has already shifted dynamics in Tazewell County. In late July, a neighboring farmer called her husband before spraying nearby fields — a courtesy she said they’ve never received before. 

“The fact that he made that phone call, I thought, was huge,” she said.

Still, she argues communities shouldn’t have to rely on personal relationships or individual knowledge of how to file a complaint to stay safe.

VandenBerg said she hopes the incident will push more residents to recognize pesticide drift as something they can challenge — not just accept as part of rural life.

“It’s an unfortunate event, but we kind of needed something like this to happen,” she said. “This stuff’s happening all over the state, and the only problem is that nobody else knows what to do.”

Christiana Freitag is a freelancer.