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. 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.
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.
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
|
