WATAUGA (North Carolina) DEMOCRAT

August 2, 2006

Program explores risks of pesticides to farm workers

By Scott Nicholson

Migrant workers and their families may be at risk for increased pesticide exposure, and an organized educational campaign is underway to help address the potential problem.

Watauga County was one of eight mountain counties in North Carolina and Virginia where Latino women in farm-worker households were interviewed about their knowledge and perception of pesticide use. The most common judgment for potential pesticide exposure was odor. They often took measures to eliminate the odors, not realizing that pesticide residue often has no odor.

Dr. Thomas Arcury of Wake Forest University, who headed up the educational campaign and has conducted pesticide research for years, said earlier studies in those counties showed migrant workers’ children had higher levels of pesticide contamination in their urine, and swipes taken in the homes also showed higher-than-average levels when compared to a national standard.

Nearly one-third of women in the recent study thought pesticides were contagious or infectious, and some thought their children wouldn’t be exposed as long as they weren’t touching the affected crops. Arcury said the educational campaign, which is ongoing, focuses on the woman’s traditional family role as caretaker and how exposed clothes are handled and treated.

In the mountain counties, Christmas tree pesticides are of particular concern, though attention to the issue led to new delivery systems designed to decrease exposure. Arcury cited the new ground-level applicators for Disulfaton, which the Environmental Protection Agency was seeking to ban before agricultural organizations introduced a safer way to disburse the chemicals to limit human exposure.

“We’ve influenced policy for an increase in training,” Arcury said, adding that a growing body of research showed the effectiveness of educating workers in the handling of pesticides, as well as expanding worker protection standards. The educational campaign in the households will also help head off concerns of exposure. Arcury referred to “take-home pathways,” the methods by which pesticides make their way from the field to the home.

While the immediate effects of acute, intense exposure to pesticides is fairly well understood, Arcury said the subtle effects of long-term, low-level exposure are difficult to gauge.

“For low-level, chronic exposure, we know that it can have effects,” Arcury said. “We don’t know for how long that will cause an effect. Even small amounts of exposure in children can harm neurological development. In adults, there’s an increased risk for dementia, Parkinson’s disease, certain types of cancer, birth defects and fertility issues.”

Typically, organophosphates are flushed or excreted from the system within 24 to 48 hours, and research also led to the elimination of some types of chemicals as pesticides.

An ongoing research project is tracking the health of 800,000 licensed pesticide applicators in North Carolina and Iowa. The study is 10 years old, Arcury said.

A recent study in six eastern North Carolina counties, children of migrant workers showed levels of organophosphates higher than the standard models used by the Centers for Disease Control.

The study showed that 40 percent of mothers and 30 percent of fathers were employed in farm work but had not received required training. About 60 percent of the children lived in households where the worker did not immediately shower after work, and 80 percent of workers changed their clothes inside the household.

The N.C. Employment Security Commission estimated there are more than 84,000 seasonal and migrant farm workers in the state.

Arcury believes changing attitudes in the worker households are the key to a successful pesticide education campaign, and that continuing research helps bring about more effective training and application procedures. “The research on factors that led to exposure lets us know how to decrease exposure,” he said.

Researchers have also asked the Environmental Protection Agency to toughen the regulations that require pesticide safety training for workers, either through brochures or videos that can be taken into the home.