Farm Workers and Pesticide Drift
by Natalie Lamela, 2004 DriftWatch Intern, and Ghassan Hamra

2004 DriftWatch Intern, Natalie Lamela, talks with tobacco pickers in Southern Wake County about pesticide drift. Photo by Billie Karel.

Pesticide drift may go largely unnoticed since it doesn’t always occur at levels high enough to see or smell. As a result, symptoms can be easily mistaken for other problems such as flu, stomach disorders and Green Tobacco sickness. It is vital for health service providers who work with farm worker families to ask them directly about occupational history as it may relate to recent chemical applications. If not treated appropriately, the symptoms of pesticide exposure may worsen and lead to more serious health problems. Toxic Free NC’s bilingual brochure on drift for health service providers is available free by calling 1-877-NO SPRAY.

While working with Toxic Free NC this past summer, I had the opportunity to meet and talk with farm workers across central North Carolina. It was easy to see why pesticide drift affects farm workers more than others. One farm worker home I visited near Mount Olive housed twenty-two people. The house had no windows to guard against the drift from tobacco fields that surrounded it. Where windowpanes should have been, old shirts were hung to keep out wind and rain. There were holes in the wooden walls big enough to look through, and the ceiling allowed the sun to shine through in some places. Such substandard housing puts the health and safety of families who live there at elevated risk for all sorts of problems, not least among them pesticide drift.

Toxic Free NC is continuing to extend the reach of its information resources to North Carolina’s Latino community, with special emphasis on farm workers and their families. Our Pesticide Drift Hotline – 1-877-NO-SPRAY – has been operating in Spanish as well as English since last spring. Thanks to ongoing support from our great team of volunteers and interns, we are also able to produce more materials about alternatives to pesticides in Spanish, and to share that information with Latino families across the state. •