U.S. Farm Workers and Environmental Injustice

Farm work is consistently ranked among the top three most hazardous occupations in the United States and farm workers suffer the highest rate of chemical-related occupational illness of all job categories in the country.

By Arturo P. Garcia
Philippine Peasant Support Network (Pesante-USA)

Posted by Bulatlat

LOS ANGELES, California - The Los Angeles Times reported Feb. 1, 2003 on a new report from the Center of Disease Control that all Americans are contaminated with industrial poisons and that children are bearing the brunt of these toxic exposures.

The same report also mentioned that Mexican Americans are carrying three times more DDT residue than non-Latino whites or blacks, the study found. The higher the exposure may reflect use of pesticide in Mexico or it maybe farm workers in the United States mostly Mexican Americans are being exposed to decades-old DDT that remains in the soil. DDT is believed to cause cancer.

In 1998, the National Agricultural Workers Survey estimated that a majority of the 600,000 California farm workers and their families have no insurance of any kind- either individual or employer-provided. (Rosenburg et al) Some uninsured farm workers seek treatment at federally-funded migrant health clinics, but far too many simply go without treatment. Recent immigrants, now ineligible for Medicaid as a result of recent “welfare reform” are now even less likely to seek medical treatment for work related injuries.

The sad fact stands out- that many pesticide poisoning are not reported.

Farm work is consistently ranked among the top three most hazardous occupations in the U.S. and farm workers suffer the highest rate of chemical-related occupational illness of all job categories in the country (Bureau of Labor Standards, 1987). Yet other hazardous industries have received much attention from the OSHA. OSHA standards, regulation and enforcement have brought about significant increases in injuries in manufacturing and construction. For example, the Mine Safety Act has reduced the injury rates in mines by 5 percent since 1973. By contrast agricultural injury and illness rates remain among the highest in the nation, ranging from 9.4 percent to more than 12 percent between 1990 and 1996 (AFL-CIO 1999, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1995, Runyan, 1993).

Direct comparison between federal government’s response to mining versus agricultural health problems reveals particularly stark inequalities. Agriculture and mining are the two most hazardous industries in the country. Yet on per worker basis, the federal budget for occupational safety in 1985 was estimated to be $ 434 per worker for all industries, $181 per mine worker and only $0.30 cents per agricultural worker. (Schenker, 1991)

Racial and socioeconomic disparities

Whatever the health effects environmental hazards have on those who lived near facilities that generate them, the impact on workers is generally more severe. Workplace exposure is generally more direct, continual and concentrated.  It is estimated that as many as 50,000 to 70,000 workers in the United States die from occupational diseases annually, and new cases of work-related ailments are believed to be between 125,000 and 350,000 each year.

It is no secret that the poor and the people of color are usually hired for the worst jobs. These hiring practices have many consequences. Exposure to environmental hazards is just one, albeit an important one.  Individuals in these racial and economic groups often occupy the most strenuous and hazardous jobs. Such jobs are also likely to be those that pose the greatest risk of exposure to chemicals and substances that can be detrimental to one’s health.

African Americans and other people of color, in particular, have been found to bear a disproportionate share of occupational risks emanating from environmental hazards in the workplace. For instance, researchers have learned that African Americans have a 37 percent greater chance of suffering an occupationally-induced injury or illness, and a 20 percent greater chance of dying from occupational disease or injury, than do white workers. Black workers are almost twice as likely to be partially disabled because of job-related injuries or illness.

Studies of industries where large numbers of African American workers are employed reveal a significantly disproportionate exposure to cancer-causing substances. (African American workers in these industries also have elevated levels of several types of cancer.) A study of 6,500 rubber workers in a tire manufacturing plant in Akron, Ohio, found that 27 percent of African American workers had been exposed to dust, chemicals and vapor particles that contained toxins: only 3 percent of the white workers experienced similar exposure.

In a study of 59,000 steel workers, it was revealed that 89 percent of nonwhite coke plants employees had been assigned to coke oven area (one of the most hazardous aspects of steel production) while only 32 percent of white employees in the coke area expected cancer related death rate.

A U.S. Public Health Department study of chromate workers found that the expected cancer mortality rate for African American was alarming 80 percent; it was 14.29 percent for whites. Similar findings were discerned in a cancer mortality study of coastal Georgia residents. This study discovered that African American shipyard workers had a lung cancer rate two times higher than expected.

A pattern of industrial exposure described above has been observed in the agricultural sector as well, where an estimated 313,000 farm workers in the United States may suffer from pesticide-related illnesses each year.

Effects of pesticides to farmworkers

Ivette Perpecto calculates that 90 percent of the approximately two million U.S. farm workers are people of color. For a great many years, researchers have found that most farm pesticide exposures occur among low-income Latino and African American migrant workers. Agriculture has become the third most dangerous job in the United States. According to the National Safety Council, the death rate in agriculture is 66 per 10,000. Workers in this sector, who are mostly low income individuals of color, have some of the most dangerous and least- protected jobs.

In California – home to the largest agricultural economy in the United States - farm work is conducted with a workforce of about 600,000 men and women. Out of these figures, almost 50 percent or half of the work force - 300,000 are children who are working in the fields. (Department of Health and Human Services, 1990). Although the average annual income of California farmworkers is slightly higher than the national average, the cost of living in many agricultural areas is also high. Many farm workers live in “labor camps” where large families often share one-or two room shelters near agricultural fields.

Jobs performed by farmworkers in California range from field preparation to planting, weeding, irrigating, pruning, harvesting and product packaging. Many of California’s Speciality crops (e.g. strawberries, grapes, broccoli, cutflowers) require labor-intensive field preparation, maintenance and harvesting- in contrast to highly-mechanized production of field crops such as wheat and soybeans. This labor-intensive management increases the potential for farmworkers’ direct contact with pesticides at many stages including fumigants; overhead application of insecticides, herbicides and fungicides’ dusting plants with pesticides prior to harvest; and post harvest treatment and hadling. Farmworkers are often responsible for mixing and applying pesticides both in the field where they work and from application in neighboring fields.

The findings and those from other studies led the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Hazards and Health ( NIOSH) to conclude that “minority workers” tend to encounter a disproportionately greater number of serious safety hazards because they are employed in especially dirty and dangerous jobs. NISOH’s conclusion is supported by data indicating that mortality from accurately hazardous work exposure among men of color is 50 percent higher that it is among white men. In addition to the workplace, people of color, particularly those who are economically distressed, are also exposed more frequently and severely to environmental hazards where they live, learn and play.

Environmental hazards and foods

Health risks from contaminated food is generally greater for low-income groups that are mostly people of color than from individuals from other socioeconomic groups. In Detroit, for example, people of color from low-income groups were found to consume the greatest amount of fish contaminated by municipal and industrial toxins dumped in Michigan’s surface water. These findings echo a 1989 report by the Kellog Foundation which noted that potentially cancer-causing or nerve-destroying substances like PCB now found in many fish are at a critical levels in the blood of one fourth of the children age five and under in some cities.

The disaproportionate risk-exposure that the people of color and low-income groups, frequently experience because of food contamination is not however limited to the inner cities. Studies of dietary preferences among Navajo suggest that they regularly consume food products contaminated with both radiation and lead 44. The Chippewa take similar risks with their food supply. Mining activities adjacent to their lands threaten toxic contamination of the fish, deer and wild rice that make up a major portion of the food supply for Chippewa tribe.

Analysis of databases maintained by the agencies studying the California water quality shows that pesticide detection is common. One hundred one pesticides and related compounds have been detected in state drinking water sources over the past ten years. Thirty-one have been detected in more than ten sources and seven more than 100 sources.

Pesticide contamination is worst in Central Valley (in central California) but occurs throughout the state. Pesticides have been detected in sources of water suppliers serving 16.5 million people

In 46 of California’s 58 counties, only 40 of the 600 water supplies that have been detected  pesticides in their water sources use the expensive treatment facilities that effectively reduce the concentration of pesticides in water.

From 1920 to the late 1960's Filipino farm workers used to work in these areas. But the demography has changed. Most of the Filipinos are now in government and private services and there is a small number of Filipinos in the work fields of the western states of California. We might think that it’s good that there are less Filipinos in the workfields because more and more Latinos from South and Central America are working in these poisoned fields. To think of this is not only bad because these farm workers are humans.

What is clear is that environmental justice is a concern of all, not only for Filipinos in America. Posted by Bulatlat

Sources:
Recommendations of the California Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Advisory Committee on Environmental Justice to the Cal/EPA Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice, July 2003.
Fields of Poison- California Farmworkers and Pesticides, 1999.
Disrupting the Balance, Ecological Impacts of Pesticides in California, Pesticide Action Network, 1999.
Toxics on Tap, Pesticides in California Drinking Water Sources, 1999 

BACK TO TOP ■  PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION  ■   COMMENT

© 2004 Bulatlat ■  Alipato Publications

Permission is granted to reprint or redistribute this article, provided its author/s and Bulatlat are properly credited and notified.