Pesticide-related health problems and farmworkers

Abstract

The realities of agricultural practice, the lack of legal protections, and severe weaknesses in the existing laws, combined with the toxic pesticides that are ubiquitous in the farmworkers' environment, make agricultural work especially harzardous. Farmworkers are exposed to toxic pesticides from many sources - the crops they cultivate and harvest, the soil in which crops are grown, drift in the air and water from pesticides applied to adjacent fields or to the very field in which they are working. Farmworkers live in homes surrounded by fields that are heavily and repeatedly sprayed. Pesticides are likely to be in the irrigation water, which many farmworkers must use for bathing, and drinking due to the substandard living quarters provided by some employers. Pesticides may contaminate the groundwater from which they get their drinking water. Farmworkers are more likely to consume produce very soon after harvesting and thus may get more pesticide residues in their food than the general public. Toxic occupational exposures start at a very young age, since agriculture is the only industry in which children comprise a significant part of the work force. Infants and very young children are often taken to the fields with their parents. Amendments to the federal and state pesticide laws and regulations that would protect farmworkers and improve their working conditions are resisted in the agricultural and agrichemical industries. In this regard, it is of interest that the first ban on DDT in the U.S. was not by the EPA in 1972, but in a 1967 United Farm Workers' union contract with a California grape grower. The public health task is clear. Not only must more resources and priority be given to biological monitoring and epidemiological studies of farmworkers, but also support given to the efforts of farmworkers and their unions to make their workplaces safe for themselves and their children.