Heat is farmworker's deadliest enemy

State ranks third on CDC's list

By CLAUDIA MELÉNDEZ SALINAS
Herald Salinas Bureau

With a heat wave blasting the Central Coast, Salinas lettuce harvester Lilia Lopez was ready to try to stay cool.

A gray baseball cap and a white handkerchief would keep the sun off her face and neck. The night before, she froze bottles of water and an energy drink. The icy bottles will help cool the rest of her food.

"My husband tells me to bring a cooler, but it's too much work," she said.

But work in farm fields in hot weather can be too much for workers' health.

A study for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released last week showed that heat kills crop workers at nearly 20 times the rate of other U.S. workers, with fatality rates highest in North Carolina, followed by Florida and California.

The Salinas Valley does not usually see the deadly temperatures often recorded in the Central Valley.

But Friday's 100-plus temperatures in the valley had ambulances busy with heat-exhaustion calls, and at least one farmworker was taken to a hospital with symptoms of dehydration, according to police radio transmissions.

It was 103 degrees in Salinas, and King City posted a high of 107, two degrees shy of its 1973 record.

Efren Barajas, vice president of the United Farm Workers Union, said the union tries to make sure farmworkers are protected in really hot weather, with shaded areas and break periods when they are affected by the heat.

The issue is a big one in the Central Valley, but southern Monterey County can get pretty steamy too, he said.

"Most companies are complying," Barajas said. "Other companies — those that don't have the union — see us in the fields and start setting up shades."

Rules in California, adopted after four workers died in a July 2005 heat wave, require farms and labor contractors to provide workers with four cups of water per hour, accessible shaded areas and five-minute breaks if they feel faint. The rules require employers and workers to be trained in preventing and recognizing heat illnesses and in first aid to treat them.

Still, problems persist.

This year, three harvesters have died of heat-related illnesses. Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, a 17-year-old Mexican immigrant who was two months pregnant, was the latest death.

Jimenez collapsed and died two days after reportedly pruning vines for nine hours near Stockton without a water break. Jimenez worked for Merced Farm Labor at a vineyard owned by West Coast Grape Farming in Farmington. The California Labor Commission revoked Merced Farm Labor's license after Jimenez's death May 16.

In Salinas, Lilia Lopez said she is lucky because her harvesting crew works with a truck that has a shade attached. But not all crews work under a shade, she said.

The CDC report, which reviewed 423 deaths from 1992 through 2006, is the most comprehensive nationwide look at heat-related fatalities. They are generally caused by heat stroke or injuries resulting from heat-induced nausea and confusion.

The greatest number of heat-related deaths was in construction, the CDC found, but the highest rate of deaths was among crop workers.

Their rate was 0.39 per 100,000 workers per year, compared with 0.02 for other U.S. workers.

North Carolina's heat-related death rate was 2.36 per 100,000 workers per year. Florida's was 0.74 and California's 0.49. No rates were provided for the 21 other states that had one or more reported deaths related to heat.

Neal O'Briant, a spokesman for North Carolina's Labor Department, said the state's high death rate is because of an influx of migrant workers — especially foreigners — who are unaccustomed to the state's hot and humid climate. He said workers tend to be in the fields more in July and August, the hottest months of the year.

The CDC found that from 2003 to 2006, the only period in which the nationalities of all workers were known, 71 percent of the dead were Latino.

Gregorio Hernandez, a 36-year-old immigrant from El Salvador, decided to quit harvesting melons in Mendota because it was too hot. Friday, as he came back from picking lettuce in Hollister, he said the temperature was just as high.

"I try to follow the lettuce. (The temperature) is cooler," he said. "Today was unbearable, but what we are we going to do?"