Farmworker and farmer perceptions of farmworker agricultural chemical exposure in North Carolina

Human Organization, Fall 1998 by Quandt, Sara A, Arcury, Thomas A, Austin, Colin K, Saavedra, Rosa M

Agricultural chemicals pose health risks for farmworkers engaged in cultivating and harvesting crops. In a project to develop culturally appropriate interventions to reduce farmworker exposure to agricultural chemicals, formative research used in-depth interviews and focus groups to elicit beliefs and knowledge about exposure from farmers and migrant and seasonal farmworkers in North Carolina. Farmworkers were concerned about acute effects they attributed to exposure and had little knowledge of long-term effects of low-level exposure. They believe that some individuals are inherently more susceptibility to the health effects of exposure than others; most do not recognize the skin as a site of chemical absorption. They report instances of exposure that reflect the power relationships with farmers, indicating that lack of knowledge is not the only issue that must be addressed in an intervention. Farmers believe that farmworkers are not exposed to chemicals because they do not mix or apply chemicals. Such a belief is consistent with the training received by farmers. The PRECEDE-PROCEED planning model is used to identify predisposing and reinforcing factors on which an effective intervention should focus.

Key words: farmworker, farm health, agriculture, pesticide, health intervention; US, North Carolina

Modern American agriculture depends on the use of a wide ange of chemicals to maintain its current levels of productivity. These chemicals include pesticides such as insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides; fuels; fertilizers; and ripening agents. Pesticides and other agricultural chemicals come in different forms, including gas, liquid, dust, and granular. Approximately one billion pounds of chemicals per year (Aseplin 1997; Gianessi and Anderson 1995) are applied through spray, in irrigation water, and from the air. Although new techniques (e.g., no-till agriculture, integrated pest management) and more effective chemicals are being developed to reduce the amounts of chemicals used, as well as their potential environmental and human health effects, chemicals remain important and widely used.

All persons in the farm environment, including farmers, farm families, and farmworkers, can come in contact with chemicals. Despite the benefits of chemicals in terms of farm production, they can pose a health hazard to people. Epidemiological evidence indicates that there are both short-term and long-term negative health consequences of such exposure (Arcury and Quandt 1998a; Savitz, Arbuckle, Kaczor and Curtis 1997; Zahm, Ward and Blair 1997), so it is considered prudent to minimize exposure.

Some chemical exposure is obvious. Spills of concentrated chemicals can occur while chemicals are being mixed or applied. Contact with the skin, inhalation of vapors, or unintentional ingestion of such chemicals results rapidly in poisoning, with severe symptoms such as tachycardia, profuse sweating, pin-point pupils, vomiting, and loss of consciousness. If untreated, death can occur. Other exposure to chemicals is less apparent, as it may be relatively asymptomatic. Low level exposure such as that produced by the airborne drift of chemicals during application may not be apparent to those exposed, if they experience no immediate ill effects. Likewise, contact with the residues left by previously applied chemicals on foliage, tools, farm equipment, and soils can result in exposure. However, because the long-term cumulative low-level effects of such exposure can be subtle (e.g., neurological deficits), nonspecific (e.g., dermatitis), or delayed (e.g., cancer or sterility), exposure to residues receives relatively less attention in safety regulations and safety training than does acute poisoning (Arcury and Quandt 1998a).

Exposure to chemical residues is of particular concern for those working in the fields. Over 85% of the fruits and vegetables produced in the United States today are harvested or cultivated by hand (Oliveira, Effland, Runyon and Hamm 1993), an activity that brings the worker into contact with chemicals. In large scale agricultural enterprises, this work has traditionally been done by a seasonal labor force composed of local and migrant farmworkers. Over time, this group of workers has included persons from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds; but the workers have in common a life characterized by its harshness, deprivation, and disease. As President Truman pointed out in 1951, "[the United States] depend[s] on misfortune to build up our force of migratory workers and when the supply is low because there is not enough misfortune at home, we rely on misfortune abroad to replenish the supply" (Migratory Labor in American Agriculture 1951).

Current estimates place the number of seasonal and migrant farmworkers and their dependents at 4.2 million. 1.6 million of these are classified as migrants (HRSA 1990), meaning that they are persons whose principal employment is in agriculture on a seasonal basis and who, for the purposes of this employment, establish temporary homes. They are employed in 42 out of the 50 states. As late as the 1980s farmworkers were ethnically diverse, including African-American, Native American, Mexican, Haitian, and white workers (Mines, Gabbard and Boccalandro 1991). In the 1990s the farmworker population has become largely Hispanic and foreign-born (Mines, Gabbard and Steirman 1997), although such a generality conceals considerable variation in nation and state of origin, as well as language and cultural diversity (see, for example, Grieshop 1997).