Farm spraying illnesses probed

Workers exposed to 'extremely toxic' chemical urged to take urine tests.

By Susan Ferriss - Bee Staff Writer

The sickening of about 40 farmworkers by a highly toxic pesticide Thursday remains under investigation, with Sacramento County Agricultural Commissioner Frank Carl trying to piece together information.

At least one farmworker, Alfred Rodriguez, 66, spent Thursday evening vomiting and feeling sick, according to his daughter, Marcela Rodriguez. Her father showered after the incident but didn't see a doctor that day, she said.

On Friday, Marcela Rodriguez persuaded her father to see his regular physician, she said.

Alfred Rodriguez and others were harvesting apples and other fruit on the San Joaquin Delta when they noticed an airplane spraying a field of asparagus nearby. They began to smell a foul odor and feel ill.

Thirty-four workers were examined at Methodist Hospital Thursday after they arrived with burning throats and eye and skin irritation. But because they did not show respiratory distress and their symptoms subsided, doctors did not admit them for treatment or order blood tests, a judgment left to physicians.

Urinalysis is a more reliable test than a blood test for an organophosphate pesticide such as the one sprayed next to the workers, Carl said.

He said a doctor who works with a state pesticide regulatory office recommended urine tests for the workers, and that only four workers so far had volunteered.

Anne Hatten, an industrial hygienist with the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, agreed and said urine tests "certainly should be done."

"This is an extremely toxic chemical," Hatten said of Di-Syston, which was being applied by an airplane Thursday. Workers should not enter a field of asparagus treated with Di-Syston for 26 days, according to product information about its usage, Hatten said.

She said CRLAF supported a state bill in the 1990s to ban the use of the most highly toxic farm chemicals on the market, including some organophosphates such as Di-Syston, but the proposal didn't go beyond a discussion in a legislative committee.

"Wholesale" bans on pesticides would be "counterproductive," Carl said. "It's all in how they're used, and the conditions, that determines if there is a problem."

He said samples of soil and the fruit closest to the asparagus field are being tested for exposure levels. Fruit from farther away can be harvested, but not the fruit where the field hands were working, Carl said.