Deadly Harvests in the Grape Fields
Mills, Nicolaus C.
IN CALIFORNIA, where agriculture has an oc cupational disease rate 50 percent higher than any other industry, people have known for some time that farm workers are endangered by pesticides....
...In an exchange with UFWOC attorney David Averbuck, C. Seldon Morley, Agricultural Commissioner for Kern County, described how he goes about his job: Q Mr...
...Recently a legal battle to gain access to the applicator reports filed by commercial pes COMMENTS AND OPINIONS ticide companies has been started by Cesar Chavez's United Farm Workers Organizing Committee...
...The first day I was at work the insect spray that was on the vines got on my legs and I got a red and yellow rash all over my legs...
...It is now appealing the March 27 decision by Superior Count Judge George A. Brown denying it access to the applicator reports for Kern County...
...They said that disclosure of the applicator reports would make known vital trade secrets and be against the public interest...
...The lengths to which this situation could go were revealed by Dr...
...Even the Chief of the California Bureau of Occupational Health has acknowledged that "war gases and organic phosphate pesticides [TEPP, parathion, malathion] have a very close similarity...
...He was not provided withprotective clothing...
...He was denied access to these, both of which are supposedly public records;* two days later, after his second meeting with the Commissioner, the pesticide companies obtained a temporary restraining order prohibiting the release of the reports...
...they treated it as a new phase in a boycott, which, according to Department of Agriculture figures, left 78 million pounds of grapes in cold storage at the end of last year (approximately 2% times the holdings of 1967...
...Their case rested on demonstrating that the companies and the state had failed to provide adequate protection for workers and that an injustice was being done if farm workers did not have advance knowledge of the pesticides to which they were exposed...
...It is largely a matter of merchandising, and this is a fundamental problemthat we are confronted with today...
...Q Have you contacted any doctors...
...They also argued that UFWOC's concern with pesticides was a result of "unsuccessful" efforts at organizing farm workers and that the information in the reports would be used "to keep alive controversy with the growers, to assist in selling unionization to workers, and to invoke public sympathy...
...We will be damned—and weshould be—if we will permit human beingsto sustain permanent damage to their healthfrom economic poisons...
...303...
...When the boy was takento a physician, no once could provide any information about the pesticide which the worker had applied...
...The affidavits of workers themselves show the extent to which pesticide poisoning has become a way of life in California...
...The people in our crew smelled unusual odors, and then many of us got sick...
...the date, location, and method of application), such information could be kept in confidence, according to the California Evidence Code, only "if the allowance of the privilege will not attempt to conceal fraud or otherwise work injustice...
...We are willing to meet withyour representatives on the sole issue of pesticides, even if you are not prepared to beginfull-scale collective bargaining at present...
...Morley, have you notified the Department of Public Health of Kern County that they should keep in contact with you if they did hear of any injuries in Kern County due to economic poisons...
...Medical reports, moreover, were as grim as farm worker testimony...
...No advance arrangements were made with a physican for prompt, adequatecare for an emergency...
...At the trial itself the position of the companies did not change...
...His statement seemed a perfect illustration of an observation made earlier in the hearings by Robert van den Bosch, Professor of Entomology at Berkeley: I think pest control, as it is now practiced inthe State of California and in the United States of America, is essentially not an ecological matter...
...A No, sir...
...A Not so far, no, sir...
...UFWOC, on the other hand, maintained that even if the reports contained trade secrets (they reveal the strength and mixture of pesticide dosages...
...I went to work the next day but it got worse so I had to quit...
...The year before that I also got sick from the insect spray the tractor sprayed while I was in the field...
...A Yes, sir...
...Despite the testimony, Judge Brown's decision upholding the restraining order of the pesticide companies hardly came as a surprise...
...The only records Cohen was allowed to see were pesticide permits showing that, in addition to organic phosphates, growers had also obtained the right to use DDT (which UFWOC is now trying to get banned in California and which recently was banned by the State Agricultural Commission of Michigan as a health menace...
...It demonstrated not only the ease with which the pesticide menace is overlooked when its primary victims are farm workers rather than consumers, but how closely the public interest in California is identified with corporate interest...
...Some of the most damaging testimony came ironically from those favoring the nondisclosure of applicator reports...
...The growers and the pesticide companies did not take this offer seriously...
...Public records in California are kept in the interest of the public, but under certain circumstances they are not open to the public...
...We would have less competitorsthat way...
...The product was also misbranded, itcontained 2 to 4 times the phosphate esterpesticide specified on the label...
...In letters to the pesticide companies and the growers, UFWOC proposed that direct meetings take place on the question of pesticides...
...I mean the harmful effects of spraying grapes with pesticides, or economicpoisons, as they are called...
...Fatalities ranged from a twenty-two-year-old farm laborer mixing a half pint of 42 percent parathion concentrate COMMENTS AND OPINIONS with each 100 gallons of water he sprayed to a three-year-old girl putting her finger in a gallon of 40 percent TEPP mixture that her brother opened when he found it in a field...
...Q Have you contacted anybody...
...A No, sir...
...After asserting nondisclosure of the applicator reports would fail to work any "substantial injustice" and that disclosure "would be very damaging to a major industry and the public in Kern County," Judge Brown argued: The importance of the agricultural chemicalindustry to this valley and this state is enormous, not only in terms of the employment and income which it generates, but in termsof the astronomical increase in productivityand improvement in quality of food and fiberthat has accompanied widespread use of agricultural chemicals...
...Since 1954 the number of doctors' reports involving pesticides and agricultural chemicals has doubled, and since 1958 there have been 800-1,100 of these reports annually...
...At that time the union became aware that many growers engaged in the practice of spraying economic poisons, as they are called, on the vineyards when crews were still working...
...Two FACTS stood out in this testimony: the inadequate safeguards for workers and the paucity of medical information available to doctors...
...We threw up and we were sick and had diz ziness...
...The worker was notinstructed about hazards and precautions forusing the pesticide...
...Of the epidemics, parathion alone was responsible for six sizable outbreaks (275 people in one peak year) among fruit pickers since 1949...
...A No, sir...
...Cesar Chavez wrote to the Chairman of the Desert Grape Growers League: There is one critical issue of such overridingimportance that it demands immediate attention, even if other labor relations problemshave to wait...
...On August 20th, Jerome Cohen, General Counsel for the union, made a demand directed to the Agricultural Commissioner of Kern County to see current applicator reports and pesticide permits...
...Dr...
...We have recentlybecome more aware of this problem throughan increasing number of cases coming intoour clinic...
...A That is right...
...Q Had you contacted the State Department of Public Health...
...Indeed, it is difficult to think of any other reason for the dangers that led Cesar Chavez to warn growers, We will not tolerate the systematic poisoning of our people...
...In another encounter with Averbuck, Joseph Sellers, a general manager for Atwood Crop Dusters, gave an equally frightening account of his sense of professional responsibility...
...Sellers acknowledged that he possessed information vital to the safety of workers: Q And yet you say you do not share this information with your competitors...
...Q Are you telling us today that you wouldrather see your competitors do it without the expertise you have, and make mistakes, justto make a buck...
...UFWOC's concern with this problem began as a result of its Coachella Valley strike during June 1968...
...West then stressed the need for advance knowledge of pesticide practice...
...Irma West, coordinator of the Injury Control Project for the California Department of Public Health, in her account of a sixteen-year-old farm laborer who died after applying a phosphate ester pesticide and sulfur to strawberries: The highly toxic phosphate ester was appliedby hand duster, a primitive and entirely unsafe method of application...
...The container labelwas not read by anyone until after the illness was discovered...
...Between last August and January 29, the day on which the hearings on the restraining order began, the union and Cohen started a second series of attempts to gain information...
...The supplier of the pesticidedid not check the number of the permit givenby the purchaser to assure that the permit wasvalid...
...Last year I missed four days' work because it took that long for the swelling to go away...
Vol. 16 • July 1969 • No. 4
