Pesticides poison farmworkers

[Guest guest]

Hello Migrant Health List, Colorado Legal Services' Casillas Pesticide Action Project recently completed and released a report on the risks of pesticide poisoning to Colorado farm workers. The report is entitled "Hidden Costs: Farm Workers Sacrifice Their Health To Put Food On Our Tables." Monday's Denver Post (8/19) has a front page story about the report, as well as interviews with and photos of farm workers who were recently exposed to pesticide drift in western Colorado. You can look at the story online at

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%257E53%257E805278%257E,00.html

If you would like a copy of the report, please email me at kjackson@... or call me at (970) 353-7554. I can email or mail it to you. Also, the project is very short on funding, so if you have any suggestions on where we could get more, please let me know!

Kimi Casillas Pesticide Action ProjectColorado Legal Services, Migrant Farm Worker Division800 8th Ave., Suite 202Greeley, CO 80631(970) 353-7554fax (970) 353-7557kjackson@...

Here are a few paragraphs from the Denver Post article:

Report: Farmworkers plagued by pesticides

Legal aid group alleges laws violated

By Cornelius

Denver Post Staff Writer

Monday, August 19, 2002 - The farmworkers said they knew they had breathed

poison moments after a crop-duster buzzed nearby, spraying a field of sweet

corn with pesticides to kill mites and worms.

Most of the 20 migrant farmworkers, in an adjacent lettuce field in Olathe,

said they felt sick immediately: They gasped for breath, had pounding

headaches, irritated eyes and swollen, numb tongues. Some vomited as a cloud

of white chemicals settled on fields around them.

The farmworkers in the western Colorado community said they left the lettuce

field when sprayed, but a foreman ordered them to continue working, saying

the crop-duster had released a harmless solution of soap and water.

A new study by Colorado Legal Services, the first of its kind in the Rocky

Mountain region, says such migrant workers at farms statewide are regularly

exposed to hazardous pesticides in violation of federal laws.

The company that hired the workers for the Olathe farm and the farmer whose

land they were working have denied any role in making the workers sick.

(please see the Denver Post web page for the rest of the story)