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Farmworkers 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 / no protection from retaliation. Agricultural workers cannot file confidential complaints to the state about violations of state or federal standards for pesticide safety and fair labor. Workers also risk being fired or suffering other forms of retaliation from their employers if they complain, because farmworkers are not covered in the Retaliatory Employment Discrimination Act (REDA). Without these protections, farmworkers 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.

North Carolina’s enforcement system relies on the honesty of the majority of growers who carefully comply with Worker Protection Standards, and lets bad actors like Ag-Mart off the hook when they flout our rules. When there are no consequences, bad actors can poison workers in our state without fear of retribution – a state of affairs that should be intolerable to consumers as well as to workers.

Take action today: Let your Representatives know that they should support legislation to improve pesticide protections for farmworkers. >>Take Action today

 
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