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Daily News Blog

22
Nov

Groups Ask EPA to Strengthen Overdue Pesticide Protections for Farmworkers

(Beyond Pesticides, November 22, 2011) Several farmworker groups filed a petition last week with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), urging the agency to implement stronger protections for farmworkers, with particular regard to health effects of exposure to toxic pesticides on the job. The petition seeks to eliminate the existing dual standard providing fewer workplace protections against pesticide exposures for farmworkers than for workers using hazardous chemicals in non-agricultural sectors.

“Most American workers enjoy workplace protections created by the federal Office of Safety and Health Administration, but not farmworkers,” said Eve Gartner, lead attorney for Earthjustice, the public interest law firm representing the groups. “They get second class treatment which exposes them to high levels of very dangerous pesticides which is not only unhealthy but also fundamentally unfair.”

According to Earth Justice, the health and safety of industrial workers falls under the jurisdiction of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Farmworkers must rely on EPA’s Worker Protection Standard of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) which is far more lenient than the OSHA rules that protect industrial workers encountering potentially dangerous chemicals.

“All we are asking is that the EPA protect farmworkers with standards that are as protective as industrial workers enjoy under OSHA,” said Virginia Ruiz, attorney for co-counsel Farmworker Justice. “Revisions to WPS are long overdue. EPA has not substantively updated it since 1992.”

Farm work is demanding and dangerous physical labor. A 2008 study by a National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) researcher finds that the incidence rate of pesticide poisoning is extremely high among U.S. agricultural workers. An average of 57.6 out of every 100,000 agricultural workers experience acute pesticide poisoning, illness or injury each year, the same order of magnitude as the annual incidence rate of breast cancer in the United States. As a result of cumulative long-term exposures, they and their children are at risk of developing serious chronic health problems such as cancer, neurological impairments and Parkinson’s disease. Despite the overwhelming evidence, EPA has not effectively updated worker protections for almost 20 years.

EPA has said that it expects to publish proposed revisions to the WPS early next year. The groups’ recommendations for those revisions focus on three key protections for the workers who handle and apply pesticides:
Ӣ Medical monitoring of workers using pesticides that inhibit enzymes necessary to the functioning of the nervous system;
”¢ Use of “closed systems” for mixing and loading pesticides, which prevent splashing and blowing of pesticides onto workers;
Ӣ Use of enclosed cabs in tractors from which pesticides are being sprayed using an airblaster.

In addition, the petition requests a range of basic measures that would afford stronger protections for agricultural fieldworkers.

The groups argue that EPA is required to incorporate these protections into its revisions both under FIFRA, the federal statute regulating pesticides, and under the agency’s stated obligation to achieve environmental justice by addressing the disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects of its programs and policies on minority populations and low-income populations.

The petition, which was prepared by Earthjustice and Farmworker Justice, is submitted on behalf of United Farm Workers, Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA), Farm Worker Pesticide Project (FWPP), California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation (CRLAF), Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN), Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) and The Farmworker Association of Florida, Inc.

“We must speak up for the very people who help to put food on our tables,” said Ms. Gartner. “Their work is integral to our daily lives and further delay in providing these basic protections is just unacceptable.”

Our food choices have a direct effect on those who grow and harvest what we eat around the world. This is why it’s important to eat organic. USDA organic certification is the only system of food labeling that is subject to independent public review and oversight, assuring consumers that toxic, synthetic pesticides used in conventional agriculture are replaced by management practices focused on soil biology, biodiversity, and plant health. This eliminates commonly used toxic chemicals in the production and processing of conventional food, which harms farmworkers and farm families.

For more information on the importance of eating organic food for you, workers and the environment, check out Beyond Pesticides’ Eating with a Conscience food guide and organic food program page.

Source: Earth Justice Press Release

All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.

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One Response to “Groups Ask EPA to Strengthen Overdue Pesticide Protections for Farmworkers”

  1. 1
    Allan Abramson Says:

    Please keep me posted both on the progress of the petition and on the revision of the FWS rules. I was heavily involved in the 1992 rules…
    Thanks.

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