Mily Treviño-Sauceda recalls a day decades ago that still reduces her to tears. While working on a citrus farm in Blythe, California, a plane flew overhead and doused the field—and the people working on it—with pesticides.

“I was up on the ladder when I heard a plane fly over,” said Treviño-Sauceda, now 55. “Then everyone just started suffocating. I tried to run away but couldn’t see or breathe. Everyone was covered with white dust and their eyes were itchy and watering.”

Thankfully, Treviño-Sauceda and her brothers and father who also worked in the fields had no serious short-term health problems, but not everyone remained unscathed. She remembers a pregnant woman who had to be rushed to the hospital to deliver her baby. While the baby survived, the mother did not.

That day is imprinted in Treviño-Sauceda’s mind and led to her involvement in the farmworker justice movement. Now retired from the fields, Treviño-Sauceda founded a women’s farmworker group in California called Líderes Campesinas and the National Farmworker Women’s Alliance, also called Alianza Nacional de Campesinas.

Members of Alianza as well as other allies and farmworkers were in Washington, D.C. on July 15–16, 2013 to call on Congress to strengthen and finalize a federal safeguard called the Worker Protection Standard and in turn, implement stronger protections for farmworkers from hazardous pesticides.

An estimated 5.1 billion pounds of pesticides are applied to crops annually in the United States. Alarmingly, while our nation’s 1–2 million farmworkers face the highest threat from the health impacts of these chemicals, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has not revised the Worker Protection Standard in over 20 years.

The farmworkers and advocates are calling for the EPA to update the Worker Protection Standard to provide more frequent pesticide training for farmworkers, giving workers the information they deserve about the specific pesticides used in their line of work and potential exposure to their families. They’re also asking the EPA to require safety precautions, protective equipment that would limit farmworkers’ contact with pesticides, and medical monitoring of workers who handle neurotoxic pesticides.

The federal government estimates that there are 10,000–20,000 acute pesticide poisonings among workers in the agricultural industry annually. Short-term effects of pesticide exposures include stinging eyes, rashes, blisters, nausea, headaches, respiratory problems, and even death. Cumulative long-term exposures can increase the risk of serious chronic health problems such as cancer, birth defects, neurological impairments and Parkinson’s disease for farmworkers, their families, and their children.

Guillette, E.A., et al. An Anthropological Approach to the Evaluation of Preschool Children Exposed to Pesticides in Mexico. Environmental Health Perspectives. 1998 June; 106(6): 347-353.

Edward Zuroweste, chief medical officer for Migrant Clinicians Network, an organization that provides support to physicians and other health professionals who provide care to farmworkers and other migrant laborers, spent more than 20 years as a doctor treating farmworkers who worked on apple orchards in rural Pennsylvania.

Zuroweste said he frequently treated farmworkers and their families who complained of bad headaches, nausea, and vomiting as a result of pesticides exposure. Oftentimes, he said, these symptoms were misdiagnosed as the flu or stress headaches.

“It’s a high-risk occupation to work among chemicals on a daily basis,” Zuroweste said. “We’re still putting billions of pounds of very dangerous chemicals on fields and orchards. Many of these pesticides have been proven to be carcinogenic and have been proven to cause birth defects.”
Zuroweste said the most dangerous pesticides should be pulled off the market and at the very least, farmworkers should be educated about what pesticides they are working with and the associated health risks, and they should be given equipment that minimizes their exposure.