Pesticide Safety
The dangers of pesticides for farmworkers
Health & Safety - Pesticide Safety
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Pesticide Hazards and Incident Data
Pesticides pose risks of short- and long- term illness to farmworkers and their families. Workers who mix, load or apply pesticides (known as pesticide handlers) can be exposed to toxic pesticides due to spills, splashes, defective, missing or inadequate protective equipment, direct spray, or drift. Workers who perform hand labor tasks in areas that have been treated with pesticides face exposure from direct spray, drift or contact with pesticide residues on the crop or soil. Farmworker families can also be injured by pesticide when farmworker children play in treated fields, when workers inadvertently take home pesticide residues on their hair, skin or clothing or when pesticides drift onto outdoor play areas and get tracked into homes, etc.
How many farmworkers are injured by pesticides each year?
The exact number of workers injured each year by pesticides is unknown because there is no national incident reporting system. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 10,000-20,000 farmworkers are poisoned on the job due to pesticide exposure. (EPA, Worker Protection Standard, Economic Impact Analysis 1993). The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics finds that farmworkers suffer the highest rate of chemical-related illness of any occupational group: 5.5 per 1,000 workers. (52 Fed. Reg. 16050, 1987)
Several states, e.g., California and Washington State, have state incident reporting systems. In California, in 2004, there were a total of 1,238 cases reported of which 828 were found to be possibly, probably or definitely related to pesticides. Of those 828 cases, 390 (47%) involved agricultural workers.
Why don't we have better data on pesticide injuries?
It is widely recognized that pesticide incidents are underreported for numerous reasons. First, many farmworkers do not seek - or cannot --medical attention for mild to moderate symptoms because of cost, lack of transportation, reluctance to take time off work, etc. Even when they seek treatment, many cases of pesticide-related illness are not recognized because the symptoms are common to many ailments (e.g., nausea, vomiting, dizziness, headache, skin rashes and eye irritation). Even cases that are correctly diagnosed are often not reported.
Recognizing pesticide-related illness is also difficult because there are few, inexpensive, widely available clinical diagnostic tests for identifying acute pesticide poisoning and workers usually do not know the name of the chemical to which they were exposed. For health care providers, taking an occupational health history can be helpful in identifying these cases. In addition, health providers have a federal right to contact the employer and obtain the name of the pesticide and the information on the circumstances of exposure. (For information on clinical competencies for identifying pesticide-related illness, see National Environmental Education and Training Foundation 2000).
What is Farmworker Justice doing to improve monitoring of pesticide related injuries?
In 2005, Farmworker Justice and three other groups released "Messages from Monitoring", a series of reports documenting the results of medical monitoring of Washington State farmworkers' exposures to pesticides over a 2 year period.
Messages from Monitoring
. An executive summary of this report is also available in Spanish.
More Messages from Monitoring, on the second year of the medical monitoring. An executive summary of this report is also available in Spanish.
