"Pesticide labels are designed to help prevent dangerous exposure, but the EPA doesn’t ensure most farmworkers can read them—an oversight that has serious implications for their health, and the environment."
"Pesticide labels are more like long technical manuals, sometimes totaling 30-plus pages. The intent of all that information is to minimize the risk of handling the highly toxic chemicals. And there are a lot of risks: Depending on the strength of the pesticide and exposure, farmworkers who come into contact with pesticides can land in a hospital with headaches, rashes, vomiting, and nausea, not to mention the potential for serious long-term health consequences like cancer.
While Spanish is the dominant language for 62 percent of farmworkers in the U.S., pesticide labels are typically only printed in English. “We’ve been fighting for bilingual pesticide labels for 15 or 20 years,” says Jeannie Economos, pesticide safety and environmental health project coordinator with the Farmworker Association of Florida. “It’s very frustrating.”
Some of the more powerful pesticides used in agriculture may come with one small message written in Spanish. Under the Spanish words advertencia or aviso, which mean “warning,” the labels typically include one sentence that reads: “If you do not understand the label, find someone to explain it to you in detail.”"
Anne Marshall-Chalmers reports for Civil Eats August 30, 2022.
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