The Moral Urgency of Farmworkers in the Media

Spring and summer herald the annual return of migrant workers to farms around the country, especially in North Carolina. So often, workers’ return to our home state means their resuming hard work for little pay, the constant risk of pesticide exposure, and, for their children, going to work in a dangerous environment. While workers’ situation in our economy remains dire, this spring is beginning differently in at least one respect: gradually, the media has begun to turn its attention to child labor issues and the pesticide exposure migrant farmworkers face.

CNN recounts the story of Jessica Rodriguez, who began working in tobacco fields in North Carolina at age 11. While she should have been in school, Jessica worked in the fields, encountering dehydration and green tobacco sickness, a potentially lethal illness related to tobacco exposure. Even worse, according to an alarming new Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, more than half of children in Jessica’s situation experience pesticides being applied to crops by growers as they continue to work in the fields.

Meanwhile, The Guardian picked up the story of Eddie Ramirez, who began work in the fields at age 12. Part of the tragedy of child labor in North Carolina is that children like Eddie and Jessica being forced to work is legal. Laws designed to allow children to work on family farms have become loopholes that allow underprotected migrant youth to be exposed to dangerous industrial agricultural environments. The U.S. now lags behind Brazil and India in the legal protections it offers children, according to the HRW report.

The groundswell of media attention in the days since the HRW report was released is a welcome development in the fight against child labor and injustice against migrant farmworkers. Dozens of media outlets from California to Connecticut have picked up the story of the fight for human dignity being waged in North Carolina and around the country, including an op-ed in the New York Times.  

For the tide to turn, however, and for farmworkers’ dignity to be acknowledged, we cannot be satisfied with merely reading about issues in the news. The time to act is now.

FAN is dedicated to fighting for workers’ dignity and committed to seeing injustice eradicated, but we are counting on your support. Your help is needed at this pivotal time:

• SIGN Human Rights Watch’s petition to end child labor in tobacco farming.

• SUPPORT FAN-member organization Toxic Free NC’s petition pertaining to proposed changes in the EPA’s Worker Protection Standard (WPS). Toxic Free’s petition calls for tightening rules concerning children being exposed to pesticides in the fields.

• COMMENT on the EPA’s proposed WPS changes. For more information, and to see FAN’s statement on the changes, visit the FAN blog.

• WRITE a letter to the editor or Op-Ed for your local newspaper bringing the plight of farmworkers to your paper’s attention. For resources, sample letters, and more, contact FAN.

• WATCH FAN’s Emmy-award winning documentary HARVEST OF DIGNITY, or contact FAN to host a screening.

• LIKE FAN on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, Pin Harvest of Dignity, and tell your friends that you stand with farmworkers this summer.

Farmworkers Come to Capitol Hill Seeking Safeguards

by Anna Jensen

“The laws of our country afford far less workplace protection to farmworkers than most workers receive in other industrial sectors.  Despite the clear hazards of their work, farmworkers are not even guaranteed basic on-the-job protections to reduce exposure to the highly toxic pesticides that threaten their well-being and that of their families and children. The threat facing millions of farmworkers that work in our nation’s fields, farms and nurseries is not only toxic but fundamentally unjust and the EPA has a legal duty to correct this.” –Tripp Van Noppen, president of Earthjustice

Washington, D.C. – On July 15 and July 16 on Capitol Hill, a dozen farmworkers from across the nation met with their members of Congress to call for the implementation of stronger protections for farmworkers from hazardous pesticides. An estimated 5.1 billion pounds of pesticides are applied to crops annually in the United States, and farmworkers face the greatest threat from these chemicals of any sector of society, with thousands of farmworkers each year experiencing pesticide poisoning.

“How can people eat knowing that so much pain and suffering went into this fruit or this bottle of wine?” asked Alina Diaz, vice president of Alianza Nacional de Campesinas. “That is not fair. Lawmakers need to really make a strong effort to make better legislation so these workers are protected.”

The farmworkers and allies visiting D.C. this week are calling on Congress to protect the health of farmworkers and their families by strengthening the Worker Protection Standard regulations. These rules were established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to set agricultural worker safety standards for pesticide use, but have not been updated or revised for more than 20 years, despite overwhelming evidence of their inadequacy.

The nation’s 1-2 million farmworkers form the backbone of the U.S. agricultural economy and many are regularly exposed to pesticides.  The federal government estimates that there are 10-20,000 acute pesticide poisonings among workers in the agricultural industry annually, a figure that likely understates the actual number of acute poisonings since many affected farmworkers may not seek care from a physician.

Farmworker families are also exposed to pesticides in the form of residues on workers’ tools, clothes, shoes, and skin. The close proximity of agricultural fields to residential areas also results in aerial drift of pesticides into farmworkers’ homes, schools, and playgrounds. Research shows that children are especially vulnerable to harms from these exposures, even at very low levels.

Short-term effects of pesticide exposures can include stinging eyes, rashes, blisters, nausea, headaches, respiratory problems and even death. Cumulative long-term exposures can increase the risk for farmworkers and their children of serious chronic health problems such as cancer, birth defects, neurological impairments and Parkinson’s disease.

Most workers in the U.S. look to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for standards to protect them from exposure to hazardous chemicals. Protection for farmworkers from pesticides is left to the EPA’s authority under the Worker Protection Standard of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (“FIFRA”), a standard that is far more lenient than OSHA rules and is fundamentally inadequate.

The farmworkers and advocates are calling for these changes to the Worker Protection Standard:

•           Provide more frequent and more comprehensible pesticide safety training for farmworkers

•           Include information about farmworker families’ exposures to pesticides in the required training materials

•           Ensure that workers receive information about specific pesticides used in their work

•           Require safety precautions and protective equipment limiting farmworkers’ contact with pesticides

•           Require medical monitoring of workers who handle neurotoxic pesticides

Want to help put pressure on the EPA to update the rules? Sign a petition urging the EPA to better protect workers. 

The Dangers of Agricultural Work

By Elaine Bartlett, Episcopal Farm Worker Ministry

The dangers of agricultural work have been widely reported—machinery accidents and heat stroke alone cause hundreds of farmworker deaths each year. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the fatality rate for agricultural workers is seven times higher than for all workers in private industry. OSHA recently launched a campaign to prevent heat illness among outdoor workers, and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has announced it is making a “major research and outreach priority” of retrofitting older tractors – the cause of most rollover deaths – with protective structures.

However, little has been done to ensure that farmworkers are educated about and provided the means to prevent or treat another major occupational hazard of agricultural work. Skin diseases and disorders are widely prevalent among U.S. farmworkers, with an incident rate of four to six times higher than workers in all other industries. Excessive exposure to sun, as well as to pesticides, dust and fungi, combined with lack of medical treatment, contribute to a widespread problem that has a major impact on farmworkers’ quality of life. Recent research of North Carolina agricultural workers, published in the Journal of Rural Health, showed that over 95 percent of farmworkers studied were afflicted by some form of skin disease. Fungal infections and sunburn regularly affected 58 percent of North Carolina farmworkers in a 2008 study that appeared in the International Journal of Dermatology. Acne, calluses, dermatitis and tinea pedis afflicted between 40 and 67 percent of the farmworkers.

Although such problems are readily acknowledged within farmworker communities, several factors prevent effective prevention and treatment, including lack of health insurance and money for treatment. U.S. health care reform, which will be fully implemented in 2014, is not likely to have a significant impact on farmworkers’ lives. At least half of farmworkers nationwide do not have the necessary immigration status to qualify for Medicaid expansion and health insurance exchanges available to low income Americans.

Under health care reform, migrant health clinics will receive funding that will allow for an increased level of services. However, only about 20 percent of farmworkers nationwide currently utilize such clinics, according to a 2005 report by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, and the issues that limit farmworkers’ use of such clinics are ones that cannot be addressed by the Affordable Care Act. About 90 percent of farmworkers report that they speak and read little to no English, according to the Kaiser report. The vast majority of farmworkers are Latinos from Mexico and other central American countries. While the primary language is Spanish, the Journal of Rural Health study found that 10 to 15 percent of their participants primarily spoke an indigenous language, such as Mixteco or Zapoteco, that made even Spanish language health care inaccessible.

Lack of transportation to clinics and fear of missing work – and wages – can be other factors that serve as a barrier to health care.

For these reasons, it is imperative to focus on outreach services to farmworkers in our communities to cover the gaps that government funded health care cannot address.

Providing farmworkers with access to a sufficient amount of clothing and hygienic items is key in decreasing the rate of skin disorders and other illnesses related to dermal exposure, such as green tobacco illness. Long sleeve shirts, long pants and gloves provide necessary protection from sun, chemicals, and insects, as well as nicotine residue in tobacco plants. For optimal health workers must have access to several changes of clothes per day as the fabric frequently becomes saturated with pesticides, perspiration, dust and other elements. Given that up to 30 workers may share a wash tub at camp, it is not always feasible to launder regularly, increasing the need for a significant supply of clothes per worker.

Equally important is the availability of soap, shampoo and other toiletries that cleanse the skin of pesticides - and, in the case of tobacco workers, crop residues. Providing workers with full spectrum sunblock can help reduce the incidence of sunburn and, ultimately, skin cancer. Access to hydrocortisone cream and other topical treatments significantly reduces the level of discomfort associated with dermatitis, and hydrogen peroxide and bandages can prevent infection from abrasions common to agricultural work.

Farmworkers serve a vital function in our country, harvesting crops for a wage that few Americans would consider acceptable. Farmworkers often spend the majority of each year far away from their homes and families, doing backbreaking labor and living in isolated camps in often substandard conditions. In these last weeks of summer, let us consider the harvest that we have enjoyed this season and what we can do to improve the quality of life for those who have provided for us.

Elaine Bartlett serves on the board of directors of Episcopal Farmworker Ministry. EFwM, in partnership with faith communities of all denominations in North Carolina, provides work clothing, toiletries and over-the-counter skin treatments to workers in 50 migrant labor camps in Sampson, Harnett and Johnson counties. To learn more, visit www.efwm.org

A Heavy Burden

By Claire Carson, Toxic Free NC/Superfund Research Center Intern 

Several weeks ago, we visited the home of a farmworker, a teenage girl who was nearly four months pregnant. It was a sweltering afternoon, and we sat around the family’s kitchen table snacking on pickled pork rind dusted with chile and lime. When asked if she was taking care of herself during pregnancy, the girl replied that yes, instead of working a full day, she’d only work half days in the fields. I can only imagine the discomfort of working in the fields while pregnant, not to mention the hazards of doing so. Being around pesticides harms anyone at any age, but pesticide exposure presents a greater danger to pregnant women, who could jeopardize their child’s health in addition to their own.

It’s pretty easy to find research connecting prenatal pesticide exposure to all kinds of awful health risks. Many recent environmental health journals include studies on the effects of pesticides on a developing brain. Common pesticides can lead to an increased risk of leukemia, brain tumors, and lymphoma.They also affect brain function, leading to slower reflexes and mental development, as well as a greater risk of Autism and ADHD. Prenatal exposure leads to more miscarriages and birth defects in our population. Since these chemicals are designed to kill living organisms, it’s no surprise that they harm developing humans as well.

In fact, the organophosphate class of pesticides was designed to kill more than just the insects that eat our food; they were developed during World War II to be used as nerve agents (http://www.epa.gov/opp00001/about/types.htm). Chlorpyrifos, one of the most well known organophosphates, appears in numerous studies to determine how it affects the human nervous system. Last year, the New York Times drew attention to a UC-Berkeley study showing that higher exposure to Chlorpyrifos lowered a child’s IQ (http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/pesticide-exposure-in-womb-affects-i-q/). Closer to home, Duke’s Dr. Ted Slotkin researches the effects of pesticides on brain development (http://sites.nicholas.duke.edu/superfund/?page_id=122), and has shown that prenatal Chlorpyrifos exposure leads to newborns with abnormally-shaped brains. After being banned from residential use, Chlorpyrifos remains in use in the fields, although use has declined over the past decade. 

Even if she does not work in the fields, a pregnant farm worker can still run the risk of pesticide exposure. Standing in the backyard of that same home near Wilson, the pregnant girl’s mother swept her hand across their backyard of commercial sweet potato fields. A few years ago, when the fields were planted with tobacco, planes would spray pesticides that the wind carried through their house (Even though the EPA’s Worker Protection Standard (http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/health/worker.htm) specifically prohibits pesticide handlers from spraying pesticides in a way that causes direct human exposure). Had this girl been pregnant while the fields behind her house were planted with tobacco, her exposure would have been many times worse.

For most American mothers, shielding their kids from pesticides is a personal lifestyle choice. Expectant mothers can choose not to use insecticides and herbicides in their homes and gardens to limit prenatal exposure. Later, they can send their children to daycares and schools committed to using Integrated Pest Management (http://www.toxicfreenc.org/informed/factsheets/whatisIPM.html) instead of traditional insecticides. Most American mothers cannot 100% ensure their kids stay away from pesticides, but they do have a certain level of control over their kid’s exposure. Farmworker mothers don’t have any of this control– these women and their children breathe, eat, and live in pesticides every hour of every day. It’s incredibly unfair that farmworker women must risk the health of their future children in order in earn the money they need to live. Farmworkers already carry the burden of harvesting America’s food– why should they carry the burden of a higher risk of chronic illness as well?

Overworked & Under Spray: Young Farm Workers' Pesticide Stories

From our friends at Toxic Free NC:

Every summer, the Farm Worker Documentary Project takes Toxic Free NC staff and our Farm Worker Documentary Intern into fields and labor camps across North Carolina. They interview farm workers about their experiences to bring their voices into the conversation about pesticide use in our state.

This year's documentary, Overworked and Under Spray, is a six-minute film that shares stories from young farm workers about resulting health effects from their exposure to pesticides in the fields, with commentary from health outreach and advocacy experts.

With the Farm Worker Documentary Project, we hope to tell a story about the role pesticides play in making agriculture the 3rd most dangerous industry in the US, how our farm workers are affected by pesticide use, and how we can change the way our food is grown.

Click here to find out more about our Farm Worker Documentary Project and what you can do to show your support for NC's farm workers.

New Reports Demonstrate Need for Policy Reforms

The Center for Worker Health at the Wake Forest School of Medicine just released two new policy briefs that highlight the need for reforms to better protect workers.  

A look at the data on occupational safety shows, for example, that many field workers are forced to do their jobs in unsanitary conditions:

• About 20% of migrant farmworkers reported lacking individual cups for drinking water.
• Lack of water for washing hands increased to more than 1/3 in late season.
• About 1/2 of migrant farmworkers reported having no soap available for hand washing.
• About 60% reported having no disposable towels available for hand washing.

A second policy brief, focused on pesticides, concludes that "Greater effort is needed to reduce farmworker pesticide exposure through training farmers as well as farmworkers, more cautious use of pesticides, greater enforcement of current pesticide safety regulations, and new regulations documenting pesticide use."

Lawsuit Seeks Ban of Common NC Farm Pesticide

From Public News Service:

RALEIGH, N.C. - From growers of hay, mint and onions to those who cultivate apples and cherries, some North Carolina farmers rely on a pesticide called chlorpyrifos. Its use is as controversial as it is common across the country, and a lawsuit seeks an outright ban by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). 

Chlorpyrifos, also sold as Lorsban, affects insects by causing nerve damage, and watchdog groups say it can do the same to humans. It was banned for household use in the U.S.about ten years ago. The Natural Resources Defense Council and the Pesticide Action Network have objected to its continued use in agriculture, saying the pesticide causes health problems in farm workers and farm communities, and they say the EPA has had their petition for three years without taking action on it. 

Those organizations' attorney, Kevin Regan with Earthjustice, which filed the suit on their behalf, says chlorpyrifos is bad stuff.

"As far as pesticides go, this is one of the worst of the worst. Science clearly shows that chlorpyrifos doesn't just poison insects, it poisons people. And our suit is attempting to get EPA to take action and make a decision, once and for all."

Learn more about how the abuse of pesticides affects NC farmworkers.

Deal with Ag-Mart falls short

Media outlets are continuing to follow the Ag-Mart settlement story.  This is from the Wilmington Star-News online:

Advocacy groups say deal with Ag-Mart falls short in protecting farm workers

by Gareth McGrath

After more than five years a deal might have finally been reached between the N.C. Pesticide Board and Ag-Mart over alleged pesticide violations at the produce giant’s  farms in Brunswick and Pender counties.

But more than a dozen groups that advocate for farm workers think the state could have done more – a lot more – to make sure another situation like this doesn’t happen again.

After getting tipped off by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, state investigators in 2005 charged the company with 369 violations – which carried a possible maximum and record-setting $184,500 fine – at its Leland and Currie tomato farms.

Investigators with the state Department of Agriculture said workers entered sprayed fields in clear violation of pesticide application guidelines on numerous occasions. The state also claimed Ag-Mart violated rules governing safety training for workers and the proper disposal of pesticide containers, and had insufficient worker safety and health measures at the farm sites.

What followed was a protracted legal battle that eventually ended up with the Ag-Mart state regional manager agreeing to pay $25,000 to settle violations dating from 2004, 2005 and 2006.  He also was allowed to keep his pesticide applicator’s license.

Per state policy, violations are cited against the license holder, not his employer.

Ag-Mart also agreed to fund a training program for farm workers during this and next year’s growing seasons.

Here’s the letter from the Farmworker Advocacy Network, also signed by other groups, highlighting the alleged deficiencies in the settlement agreement.



Update on Wednesday, June 23, 2010 at 8:44AM by Chris Liu-Beers

FAN also received significant coverage from NC Policy Watch:

Farmworker advocates decry AgMart settlement

For those who may have missed it, a collection of farmworker advocates delivered an open letter to the chairman of the state Pesticide Board last Friday that spells out many of the deficiencies in the recent settlement of the AgMart farmworker poisoning case. It is a damning letter. Here is a key segment:

For more than five years, the Pesticide Section staff worked diligently with the resources they had available to collect good evidence and make a case for Ag-Mart’s accountability in this matter. We understand that settling this case brought an end to significant public expense and extra workloads for the Pesticide Section staff.

However, in the final settlement, the Pesticide Board chose to back away from its own findings. In agreeing to make a public statement absolving Ag-Mart and Mr. Oxley from any negligence or responsibility in the matter, the board sent a much louder statement that the state ultimately will not hold violators responsible when a preventable pesticide incident has the potential to cause irreparable harm to farmworkers and their families. How much worse would a case have to be in order to make the charges stick?

The Pesticide Board has now completed five years of hearings on this heartbreaking case. In all of those years, the Board has only once touched on the underlying problems that gave rise to this case, when ordered to do so by the NC General Assembly, and board members chose to do so in the narrowest possible way. As observers of your work throughout these five years, we have been astounded that members did not seriously discuss what the board could do to prevent such pesticide violations from ever happening in our state again. The NC Pesticide Board has the authority and the power to make significant changes in the working conditions faced by farmworkers, who face some of the most difficult and dangerous conditions of any workers in North Carolina, yet have chosen instead to absolve the worst violator in our state’s history.”

You can read the entire open letter by clicking here. You can also read a summary of some the group’s specific and common sense recommendations for preventing agricultural pesticide exposure by clicking here.