Victims of Dangerous Pesticide Contamination Win Settlement

Nearby where we are working. Article from SF Independent Media Center.

excerpt:

In spite of Governor Schwarzenegger’s recent veto of a bill that would have required fines for violators of pesticide use rules, a judge ruled on Friday that Western Farm Service and Kirschenmann Farms must pay damages to residents of Arvin, California who were poisoned by pesticide drift on July 8, 2002. Eighty-four people will share a $500,000 award from Western Farm. Kirschenmann Farms was ordered to pay an additional $275,000 to the victims.


Senior scientist with Pesticide Action Network North America, Dr. Susan Kegley, has been working on the issues of pesticide drift for many years. According to Dr. Kegley, “This settlement should send a message to pesticide applicators that poisoning people as a routine part of doing business is no longer acceptable. The fumigant pesticides especially are too hazardous to be used safely and should be phased out. When "accidents" like this keep happening, it's no longer an accident, but a poorly designed system that ensures these such poisonings to keep happening will continue.”

Central Valley Brain Drain

An LA Times article sent to me by a friend: Fresno's Brain Drain Has Left the Town Smarting

excerpt:
California's vast Central Valley is one of the world's most fecund farming regions, but its vast agricultural fields separate midsize cities known for smog and sprawl from rural enclaves bursting with new immigrants.

Fresno, the largest city in the region, has far to go as an economic hub. Just last month, the Brookings Institution gauged Fresno as having the worst concentrated poverty in America. With 43.5% of its poor living in "extreme-poverty neighborhoods," Fresno even beat out No. 2 New Orleans with the depth of its misery. And Fresno, Kern and Tulare counties rank in the top 10 in America for the percentage of adults without a high school diploma, according to a 2002 report by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Border (SF Chronicle)

The Chronicle is running a six-part "occasional series" focusing on the Mexican-American border, "the world's longest border between a developed nation and a developing one." Below is a summary of the series, including links to the first 2 (parts 3-6 will be published in the upcoming days).

Part 1

Mission, Texas: A manufacturing boom along the Mexican side of the border has drawn people from the interior of both Mexico and the United States toward new jobs.

Part 2

Elsa, Texas: Young people in south Texas balance American individualism with Mexican American family traditions as they forge a path into the future.

Part 3

Nogales, Sonora: Hospitals in southern Arizona, plagued by the cost of caring for uninsured immigrants, improve hospitals south of the border and their bottom line at the same time.

Part 4

Sells, Ariz.: The Tohono O'odham people, whose ancestral land is bisected by the border, live and work where trafficking in humans and drugs is on the rise.

Part 5

Jacumba, Calif.: A Vietnam vet like many of the Americans who volunteered for civilian border patrols this year, Britt Craig feels he is serving his country with the Minutemen.

Part 6

Progreso,Baja California Norte.: Power plants and liquid natural gas terminals being built in Mexico to satisfy demand mostly north of the border affect the environment in both countries.

"Farm Workers: Are They Really Protected When Working in the Fields?" (New Mexico)

At a bookstore last night, I was browsing through the pages of Censored and happened upon a 2003 article with the same title as this post (by Ruben Nuñez, Olga Pedroza & Kitty Richards). I found some of the same information on the NMPHA site. Here's an excerpt:

Advocates working with farm workers relayed their experiences to professional public health workers and community residents at the New Mexico Public Health Association Meeting held in Albuquerque on April 8, 2003. They focused on farm workers working in the fields of the Mesilla and Rincon valleys. These two valleys produce the majority of agricultural goods for New Mexico, and are referred to as New Mexico’s agricultural belt.

Olga Pedroza, managing attorney with New Mexico Legal Aid, reported that farm workers have shorter life spans and suffer from many health problems because of their employment in the fields and their poverty. Olga Pedroza states, “The farm workers show me their arms, covered with red blotches caused by the pesticides that they handle.” Farm workers are unable to access health care for their families because they do not have health insurance or the money to pay the small fee charged by the clinics.

Farm workers work in the extreme heat of Southern New Mexico, up to 110 degrees on some summer days. They are constantly bending over because they are asked to hand weed the fields. Although short hoes have been outlawed, hand weeding is legal. Some farm workers, instructed by the labor contractors to apply toxic pesticides without protective gear, are unaware of the serious health risks that may result.

According to Ruben Nunez, a former farm worker who is now working with the Colonias Development Council, “Our bosses referred to pesticides as medicine for the plants. Because medicines cured us of our illnesses, we thought that pesticides were good for us. We did not know that handling pesticides was dangerous.” The Worker Protection Standard law, enacted by Congress in 1995, requires that farm workers attend worker protection training and become certified prior to working in the fields. Ruben Nunez states, “I was responsible for educating my fellow farm workers on the effects from pesticides. Unfortunately, the training only lasted from 30 to 45 minutes and did not begin to provide information on all of the different pesticides that we handled. After the mandatory training, the workers received their certificate, a necessity for work in the fields.”

Some of the fields do not have portable toilets, even though this is an illegal practice. When a portable toilet is located in the fields, it is often filthy and located in a distant part of the farm. Although there may be drinking water, there are often no cups to drink from, or there is one community cup provided for everyone. These unsanitary conditions contribute to infectious diseases, dehydration, and bladder infections when workers, who do not want to travel the long distance to the portable toilet because of the time taken away from work, decide to forego water so that they don’t have to urinate. Farm workers are hesitant to complain about their working conditions because they fear deportation or the loss of their only source of income, if fired due to retaliation.

Full text, 2 versions: MS Word; Google Word->HTML conversion

Renewable Energy & the Navajo Nation

This isn't directly related to ICT and health, but it has implications for sustainable design. I just returned from the ASME International Mechanical Engineering Conference and Expo (IMECE) where I heard Sandra Begay-Campbell speak about a joint rural electrification project involving the Navajo Nation, DOE, and Sandia National Labs. The work has been going on for more than 10 years now. Some basic facts that I learned during the talk: (1) 180,000 people live on the reservation; (2) the reservation is bigger than 15 of the 50 US states; and (3) 18,000 homes do not have electricity. The work to date has included 4 generations of renewable energy technologies, the latest a hybrid wind-solar generator to be used at the household level (many households live miles from their neighbors). More information: memorandum of understanding between Navajo Nation, DOE, Sandia (2000); project news release (2000); and NREL paper written by Sandra (2003).

Mobile Phone Apps Rising: Banking in South Africa

From the article:
Open to anyone with a phone, mobile banking has proved a hit with people such as Mpanza in South Africa's townships and villages, and looks set to spread quickly across Africa. Account holders use text messages, or SMS, to pay for goods, transfer money to friends and family and top up the credit on their pre-pay phones. Bosses can pay salaries direct into cellular accounts and customers can deposit cash at Post Offices and some bank branches.