Pesticides Taking Toll on Farmworkers

[marmar]

from Civil Eats:


Pesticides Taking Toll on Farmworkers
By Raviya Ismail on August 9, 2013


If the apples in your local store are bug-free because of pesticides, then you might ask who the pesticides hurt before the apples left the farm. That’s because many pesticides are toxic enough to seriously harm the humans who work in the orchards.

A growing number of Americans recognize the hazards of toxic chemicals and as a result have reduced their consumption of produce grown with pesticides to protect their family’s health. But while U.S. consumers are finding ways to protect themselves, far too little is being done to protect farmworkers, who are on the frontlines of exposure to high levels of toxic pesticides.

To address this urgent need, farmworkers from across the nation recently met in Washington, D.C. with their members of Congress to call for stronger protections from hazardous pesticides. These farmworkers and their allies seek to strengthen the Worker Protection Standard under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, a set of outdated safeguards the Environmental Protection Agency has failed to revise for more than 20 years despite overwhelming evidence of their inadequacy.

“If policy makers truly listened to the stories of what is going on, laws would change,” said Mily Treviño-Sauceda, a former farmworker who founded a women’s farmworker group in California and is president of the National Farmworker Women’s Alliance. She added that if farmworkers aren’t protected from pesticide exposure, neither are their communities, their school-aged children, nor the food our plates. ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://civileats.com/2013/08/09/pesticides-taking-toll-on-farmworkers/#sthash.TkRj09pd.dpuf