ORLANDO SENTINEL

March 7, 2008

Farmworkers want U.N. intervention

Nobody helps with their illnesses traced to pesticides, so they ask for intervention based on racial bias.

Eloisa Ruano Gonzalez, Sentinel Staff Writer

Farmworkers who picked vegetables on Lake Apopka's shores have tried for years to get help for chronic medical conditions they say were caused by pesticide poisoning.

Now, they are appealing to the United Nations to investigate their case.

"The farmworker community wants a sense of justice. They've watched people die," said Jeannie Economos, pesticide project coordinator with the Farmworkers Association of Florida. "This community is very hurt, both physically and emotionally, because there's no response to their health-care issues. Their concerns have been ignored."

Two years after releasing a report on the workers' ailments, advocates asked the U.N.'s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to intervene last week. The association plans a news conference outside its Apopka office at 1:30 p.m. today to draw attention to the workers' plight.

Farmworkers frequently handled pesticides that were later found in the bodies of hundreds of dead birds near Lake Apopka in 1998. The state stopped farming around the lake that year and millions have been spent to restore the environment and redevelop the land.

Geraldean Matthew, 58, remembers decades of living near the lake and picking vegetables. She would bring home the containers to store clothing, hair accessories, food and baby's milk because her family didn't have enough money to purchase drawers and storage containers. She said the workers didn't understand how dangerous the chemicals were and they weren't taught how to handle them.

Now it's too late. Matthew suffers from diabetes, high blood pressure, lupus and kidney failure and congestive heart failure.

And two of her six children have been diagnosed with lupus, while others have respiratory problems, she said.

"How can you go through that much torment in 58 years? It seems like you've been living forever," she said.

She's watched many friends who worked with her on the farms die in their late 40s and 50s from health complications, although they once were healthy and strong.

Nothing happened since the 2006 report was released to media outlets and environment and health officials, advocates say. The UN did not respond to inquiries Thursday. The committee that was sent the report reviews claims of "environmental racism."

The association hopes their involvement will spark research that can tie the pesticides to the workers' complaints.

"We know it's very difficult to make a definitive link," Economos said. But she said many former farmworkers want closure.

The association says its report identified several common chronic health conditions among workers. The 148 farmworkers in the 2006 survey blame their diseases, including congestive heart failure, kidney failure, lupus and cancer, on the decades of exposure to the chemicals they handled.

But Orange County Health Department officials say they studied the health problems, including lupus, cancer and birth defects, and found the rates weren't much higher than the state averages. Spokeswoman Mirna Chamorro said the agency found only 23 lupus cases from 1992 to 1998. Reports came from health-care providers.

Chamorro said the department also received a grant to address environmental concerns in the area. Officials have met with residents and will do so again in May.

After decades of handling pesticides, Matthew's body is gradually ceasing to function, primarily from kidney failure and congestive heart failure, she said. She's on dialysis three times a week, which Medicaid now helps pay.

The stress of having to pay medical bills after being hospitalized several times without insurance is taking toll on her. "There's a gigantic injustice — that there isn't acknowledgment that this community is sick," Economos said. "They need to quit denying that there's no health effects on people when there were effects on gators and wildlife."