Farm Workers at Risk from Pesticide Exposure in NC

North Carolina agriculture relies on migrant and seasonal farmworkers to produce our annual harvest.  North Carolina ranks sixth in the country in the number of agricultural employees, with an estimated 150,000 workers who plant, tend, and harvest crops in every region of the state.

Conventional agriculture also relies heavily on pesticides – it is conservatively estimated that 62 million pounds of pesticides are applied to North Carolina crops every year.  Agricultural employees are often exposed to pesticides on the job, which can increase their risk of many kinds of health problems, from rashes and nausea to cancer and birth defects.  Agricultural families are at very high risk for exposure to pesticides. Workers can inadvertently take toxic pesticide residues home on contaminated clothes, hair, and skin. Because most workers also live very close to the fields, they are also subject to pesticide drift at home. Once in the home, pesticide residues are very easily picked up by small children, who are especially sensitive to health damage from pesticide exposure.  Subjecting workers to hazardous pesticide exposure on the job puts both the workers and their families at risk for serious health consequences, and ultimately hurts North Carolina agriculture. 

In 2005 several farmworker families employed in North Carolina by Ag-Mart, Inc., a Florida produce giant, gave birth to babies with severe birth defects. Upon investigation, hundreds of violations of state pesticide laws and federal Worker Protection Standards were found on Ag-Mart's farms in both NC and FL, setting the record for the highest pesticide fine in North Carolina history. Repeated exposure to unsafe amounts of pesticides during pregnancy is the suspected culprit in this case, which has exposed many of the flaws in our system of worker protection and pesticide enforcement, including:

• No confidentiality. Agricultural workers cannot file confidential complaints to the state about violations of state or federal standards for pesticide safety and fair labor. Thanks to advocacy from Toxic Free NC and our partners at Farmworker Advocacy Network, farmworkers are now covered in the Retaliatory Employment Discrimination Act (REDA) under a 2008 change to the law. However, confidentiality protection would help prevent the risk being fired or suffering other forms of retaliation, and the need to take action under REDA. Without confidentiality, farmworkers still cannot safely report pesticide misuse or worker mistreatment in the workplace.
  >>See text of the Retaliatory Employment Discrimination Act (REDA)

• Low fines. Fines for pesticide violations are extremely low, making it cheaper for big employers to simply flout the rules and pay fines than to actually comply with the law. While other pesticide users, such as golf courses, must pay $2,000 per pesticide violation, agricultural employers pay only $500. Another loophole in the law requires that violations be "willful" in order to issue a fine.

More resources:
Learn more about farmworkers' experiences with pesticides in North Carolina: Check out our farm worker documentary project.
Toxic Free NC Responds to NC Report on Ag-Mart, Pesticides and Birth Defects

From the news archives:

Aug 20, 2008: Toxic Free NC Director Fawn Pattison appears in WRAL Focal Point Documentary: Practical Application
WRAL examines the issue of worker safety in the application of agricultural pesticides in North Carolina. The documentary features interviews with Toxic Free NC's director Fawn Pattison, as well as several of our allies in the NC Farmworker Advocacy Network. >>See the 20 minute documentary at WRAL.com