"Agricultural Poisons Tell a Tale of Two Californias,"

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[Indigenous Mexican farmworker Esperanza] told the medical staff she worked in farm fields, but no one informed her that dozens of agricultural poisons increase the risk of cancer or that strawberry growers use copious quantities of particularly toxic, drift-prone pesticides on the soil before planting. 

These fumigants are also used on other row crops and orchards, but strawberry growers apply them in the greatest quantities. One of their favorite fumigants—1,3-dichloropropene, also known as 1,3-D or Telone—causes tumors in multiple organs and glands in rodents, including mammary glands, studies show. California listed 1,3-D as a carcinogen in 1989, yet it remains the state’s third highest-volume pesticide...

The ICN analysis also suggests that the burden of this pollution falls disproportionately on immigrants with limited English proficiency—people who make up a large proportion of the agricultural workforce.

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Immigrants and agricultural workers exposed to the chemicals come from underserved populations with multiple stressors that increase their susceptibility to toxic exposures, said environmental epidemiologist Paul English, an expert on tracking community health hazards and disparities. 

“Lack of access to health care, poverty, poor housing, poor working conditions, all these things make them more vulnerable,” said English, who recently retired from the nonprofit Public Health Institute...

Last month, seven years after DPR was first sued for failing to comply with state rulemaking requirements, the agency released a draft standard for workers who labor near treated fields, setting a regulatory target five times higher than the level OEHHA said would reduce lifetime cancer risk.

DPR’s target assumes workers could be safely exposed 40 hours a week over 40 years, Sellen said. But most farmworkers, like Esperanza and Vasquez, live with their families near their job site, so their combined exposures are much higher than what DPR assumed...

These assumptions allow DPR to say it’s using OEHHA’s safety target to protect workers near treated fields, Sellen said. “But it still doesn’t protect children. It still doesn’t protect residents. And it still doesn’t protect farmworkers because it doesn’t account for their background exposure when they go home.”

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