But chil­dren in farm­work­er com­mu­ni­ties are espe­cial­ly at risk. While the report con­firms the grow­ing pub­lic con­cerns about health risks per­me­at­ing our food chain, it also shows how socioe­co­nom­ic inequal­i­ties can shov­el many of the worst effects onto exploit­ed, impov­er­ished workers.

Some of these chem­i­cals make their way into the foods we eat, but they are more acute­ly con­cen­trat­ed in the envi­ron­ments sur­round­ing farm­lands. Chil­dren in or near farm­ing areas can be exposed through myr­i­ad chan­nels, from con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed soil to the air in playgrounds.

A new analy­sis by the Pes­ti­cide Action Net­work North Amer­i­ca (PAN) draws a dis­turb­ing con­nec­tion between pes­ti­cides in our food sys­tem and seri­ous health prob­lems among women and chil­dren. The report reviews empir­i­cal research link­ing agri­cul­tur­al chem­i­cals to birth defects, neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­or­ders, child­hood can­cers and repro­duc­tive problems.

There’s been much pub­lic debate over the impor­tance of organ­ic pro­duce, sus­tain­able farm­ing and reg­u­lat­ing genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied foods–usu­al­ly spurred by con­cerns over con­sumer health or ani­mal rights. We hear less about the safe­ty con­cerns that affect the work­ers who han­dle our fruits and veg­eta­bles before any­one else. For many Lati­no migrant work­ers, there’s no equiv­a­lent of a com­pre­hen­sive safe­ty label – no option to avoid the ubiq­ui­tous poi­sons in the field. Many wor­ry that to com­plain about work­ing con­di­tions would mean being fired. Oth­ers sim­ply – and quite rea­son­ably – have lit­tle faith in the ane­mic gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­to­ry systems.

PAN cites research show­ing that pes­ti­cide injuries are preva­lent among agri­cul­tur­al work­ers. Var­i­ous stud­ies cit­ed in the report also sug­gest an epi­dem­ic of chem­i­cal ​“drift” from fields into near­by homes and neigh­bor­hoods. Accord­ing to a 2009 report by the advo­ca­cy groups Earth Jus­tice and Farm­work­er Jus­tice (FWJ), ​“a grow­ing num­ber of epi­demi­o­log­i­cal stud­ies link pes­ti­cide drift to spe­cif­ic adverse health effects in humans, includ­ing autism spec­trum dis­or­ders, Parkinson’s dis­ease, and child­hood acute lym­phoblas­tic leukemia.”

While the prob­lem is polit­i­cal­ly invis­i­ble, the effects are all too appar­ent. The PAN report describes the expe­ri­ence of Ana Dun­can Par­do, a com­mu­ni­ty health activist in North Car­oli­na, who had a jar­ring encounter with farm­work­er families:

With­in five min­utes I had not­ed mul­ti­ple cleft palates and sev­er­al chil­dren with appar­ent Down Syn­drome…. It was shock­ing and dis­turb­ing to walk into a room with a group of par­ents and chil­dren that eas­i­ly rep­re­sent­ed three to four times the nation­al aver­age for birth defects.

The effect is like­ly com­pound­ed by the wide­spread use of child labor in agri­cul­ture – chil­dren bare­ly in their teens can legal­ly work on farms. That puts kids in dai­ly con­tact with tox­ins that could irrepara­bly harm their brains and bodies.

A FWJ brief­ing paper points to a his­to­ry of vast dis­so­nance between the fed­er­al reg­u­la­tion of harm­ful pes­ti­cides for heav­i­ly exposed work­ers, and par­al­lel stan­dards for the gen­er­al pub­lic. The Fed­er­al Insec­ti­cide, Fungi­cide, and Roden­ti­cide Act estab­lish­es pub­lic health-based safe­ty pro­tec­tions, for exam­ple, but envi­ron­men­tal advo­cates point out that farm­work­er fam­i­lies’ health vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties are neglect­ed and essen­tial­ly ignored in reg­u­la­to­ry assess­ments of the social costs of indus­tri­al pes­ti­cide use.

Chil­dren of farm­work­er fam­i­lies are left with far weak­er pro­tec­tions despite their spe­cial vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. Despite some restric­tions on child work­ers han­dling pes­ti­cides, accord­ing to FWJ, ​“Chil­dren under 16 can still han­dle Cat­e­go­ry III or IV pes­ti­cides even though the chron­ic haz­ards asso­ci­at­ed with these chem­i­cals include ​‘poten­tial neu­ro­tox­i­c­i­ty, repro­duc­tive tox­i­c­i­ty, endocrine dis­rup­tion, and car­cino­genic effects.’”

Even if they don’t work in the fields, the chil­dren of farm­work­ers are not nec­es­sar­i­ly safe in their own homes. Vir­ginia Ruiz, FWJ’s direc­tor of Occu­pa­tion­al & Envi­ron­men­tal Health, explains that farm­work­ers work­ing with pes­ti­cides car­ry ​“take-home residues” on their clothes and skin. While safe­ty warn­ings rec­om­mend avoid­ing phys­i­cal con­tact with con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed work­ers, Ruiz says, ​“It’s sort of an unre­al­is­tic expec­ta­tion of peo­ple to refrain from hug­ging their chil­dren and oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers as soon as they get home.”

The PAN analy­sis urges con­sumers and par­ents to take action for stronger safe­ty pro­tec­tions. These could include man­dates to phase harm­ful pes­ti­cides out of the mar­ket, and pro­mot­ing pes­ti­cide-free school lunch­es and playgrounds.

Nonethe­less, the bat­tle against the pes­ti­cide threats on farms can’t be lim­it­ed to the con­sumer end of the food chain. Farm­work­ers need to be engaged as stake­hold­ers in pur­su­ing just solu­tions to the unique risks posed to their com­mu­ni­ties. Farm­work­ers have played a lead­ing role push­ing for tighter EPA reg­u­la­tions as well as grass­roots efforts to mobi­lize com­mu­ni­ties against pes­ti­cide drift. For exam­ple, a com­mu­ni­ty-dri­ven cam­paign in California’s Cen­tral Val­ley led to the cre­ation of buffer zones to keep pes­ti­cide con­t­a­m­i­na­tion away from sen­si­tive loca­tions like schools, farm­work­er camps and res­i­den­tial areas.

Kristin Schafer, coau­thor of PAN’s report, tells Work­ing In These Times, ​“Farm­work­er fam­i­lies were essen­tial to the suc­cess of these efforts – some work­ing behind the scenes, oth­ers speak­ing out to demand pro­tec­tions for their fam­i­lies.” She adds that envi­ron­men­tal mon­i­tor­ing projects in oth­er farm­work­er com­mu­ni­ties have pro­vid­ed oppor­tu­ni­ties for labor­ers ​“to doc­u­ment pes­ti­cide drift from neigh­bor­ing fields, and use [this] as sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence to advance these pro­tec­tions.” Com­mu­ni­ty activists are now press­ing Cal­i­for­ni­a’s reg­u­la­to­ry author­i­ties to tran­si­tion farms away from pes­ti­cides and toward green­er alternatives.

Still, in every pol­i­cy debate, farm­work­er fam­i­lies will face tremen­dous bar­ri­ers of race, lan­guage abil­i­ty, polit­i­cal dis­en­fran­chise­ment and pover­ty. Those aren’t chem­i­cal threats, but they con­sti­tute the cli­mate of oppres­sion that blan­kets the nation’s farms, and that cor­ro­sive cloud is now drift­ing into all our communities.