The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Worker Protection Standard (WPS) provides basic workplace protections to farmworkers and pesticide handlers to minimize the adverse effects of pesticide exposure. EPA announced major revisions to the WPS in September 2015. MCN and FJ's fact sheet provides a summary of the revised regulation.

On Monday August 18, 2014 MCN submitted technical comments to the EPA regarding the proposed changes to the Worker Protection Standard.  View MCN's recommendations for advancing stronger safeguards to protect farmworkers from pesticide exposure. 

The Occupational Health and Safety Resource Center is a virtual repository of Spanish educational materials, data sources, and links to bilingual informational websites on occupational health and safety issues related to agricultural work. It also contains an ample list of national and state agencies that have produced materials in Spanish for farmworkers’ health-related problems.

MCNs own Deliana Garcia helped in being a part of the advisory committee to this resource center.

What is the objective?  To facilitate a central access point to high quality Spanish educational materials on agricultural occupational health and safety issues for people conducting work on health promotion and prevention activities and on workers’ rights and problems related to agricultural work.

Who are the target audiences? Health-outreach workers (promotores), community advocates, health providers, contractors/employers, farmworkers and their families, and others interested in the health and safety issues of agricultural workers.

What areas are included? The materials cover five key relevant areas: 1) Farmworkers’ rights; 2) Injury prevention; 3) Respiratory illnesses; 4) Heat illnesses; and 5) Pesticide exposure.

How did we do it? To develop the Virtual Resource Center, the process entailed:

• Asset mapping of educational, informational and research materials available in Spanish related to the five mentioned areas.
• Selection of materials using the following criteria: accurate information, culturally and linguistically adequate (including literacy level), relevant to health area, and visually acceptable quality.
• Insertion of resources into an excel format under five different categories, including source, type of material, and description of its content.

Development of new materials: to complement the existing educational resources, we developed a “Promotores Training Manual on Occupational Health and Safety of Agricultural Workers”.  Based on an ethnographic framework, the manual presents the perspective of agricultural workers on the five mentioned areas (their stories) and provides community health workers with tools on how to conduct prevention and promotion activities. It also refers them to existing resources.  We also produced a series of Spanish and selected indigenous languages Public Service Announcements (PSAs) on these areas.

Señales y síntomas de envenenamiento por pesticidas

Developed by the California Poison Control System in collaboration with the Western Center for Agricultural Health and Safety at the University of California, Davis and the California Department of Pesticide Regulation

Evidence is increasingly emerging about chronic health implications from both acute and chronic exposure. A growing body of epidemiological evidence demonstrates associations between parental use of pesticides, particularly insecticides, with acute lymphocytic leukemia and brain tumors. Prenatal, household, and occupational exposures (maternal and paternal) appear to be the largest risks.
This report from the American Academy of Pediatrics reviews findings from population studies and related animal toxicology studies linking early/ parental exposure to pesticides to adverse birth defects and health conditions in children.

© AAP - 2012; This document is copyrighted and is property of the American Academy of Pediatrics and its Board of Directors.