Farmworkers Deserve Public Support

摘要

You're 100% correct. Farmworkers toil day in and day out with exposure to the persistent hazards of toxic pesticides. Unlike other workers in the U.S., farmworkers are not protected under the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Health and Safety Administration. Instead, worker protection standards are contained within regulations of federal pesticide law, in a section called the Agricultural Worker Protection Standards. These standards, insufficient at their foundation, only recently received a modest update, representing a compromise between industry and farmworker advocacy organizations, after 20 years of delay. However, the Trump Administration has been working to undo major components of the update, reopening aspects of the new standards that established: training; small buffer zones after a pesticide application; a minimum 18-year-old age requirement to apply highly toxic pesticides, and; the opportunity to create a "designated representative" in the event a farmworker needs to obtain information about where and when pesticides were applied for legal or medical purposes. Media reports indicate that this move by the Trump administration is in lock-step with requests from the American Farm Bureau Federation, an umbrella group for the agrichemical industry.