Farm Laborers’ Illness Tied to Poor Sanitation

Because their employers frequently refuse to provide them with toilets or water to drink or wash with, more than half a million American farm workers suffer rates of infection and disease comparable to those of Third World peasants.

That is the conclusion of public health specialists who recently reviewed the problem for the Labor Department, which is under court direction to decide by next Tuesday whether national sanitation standards should be set for field workers.

Despite the experts’ findings, the department’s stand on the issue is still very much in doubt.

‘No Toilet for Her’

However, Francisca Carvazas, a farm labor organizer here, has no reservations about the need for federal action. She remembers that 20 years ago, when she was a young girl, her mother, Maria, used to rush into the house after a day at work in the Arizona onion fields and head straight for the bathroom. “There was no toilet for her to use at work,” Carvazas recalled.

A decade later, Carvazas encountered the same problem when, as a teen-age student, she worked as a field hand. Now, Carvazas is working on behalf of agricultural laborers here and in the 36 other states where no law requires that their place of employment have toilets or water to drink or wash with. Today, they are the only American workers without a legal right to such basic facilities.

The Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration has resisted establishing such a right since 1972, when farm labor organizations first asked that federal sanitation standards be set for agricultural workers. Next week, however, OSHA must announce whether it believes such federal standards are warranted.

The deadline is part of a revised court settlement OSHA reached nearly three years ago with the Migrant Legal Action Project, a Washington, D.C., public interest group that first took the agency to court over the issue in 1973. Late last month, a federal appeals court warned OSHA lawyers that it would react with “extreme displeasure” if next Tuesday’s deadline is missed.

But, as recently as last week, Robert Rowland, OSHA’s acting director, told a congressional subcommittee that he was undecided on the issue.

Wednesday, a source close to OSHA told The Times that, two weeks ago, five of the seven members of the agency’s field sanitation team sent a memo to ranking officials of OSHA stating in strong terms that a field sanitation standard should be adopted. The memo went on to say, the source said, that, if the agency decided not to set a standard, it would bring discredit on OSHA and the members of the team. The source said that the authors of the memo had received no response from their superiors.

Nearly a year ago, the agency held five public hearings on a proposed field sanitation standard that it had promulgated in March, 1984. The standard would require all agricultural employers with 11 or more workers to provide suitable drinking water, hand-washing facilities and a toilet within a quarter mile for every 20 employees.

85% of Workers Excluded

Charles Horowitz, a lawyer with the Migrant Legal Action Project, said that the proposal would cover about 529,000 farm workers, roughly 15% of the nation’s field hands. He said that about 85% of the nation’s farm laborers would be excluded because their employers have fewer than 11 workers. Nonetheless, he said that he strongly favors adoption of the standard because it holds the potential--with proper enforcement--to dramatically improve the health and the productivity of farm workers.

The two public health experts OSHA commissioned to review all the evidence presented at the hearings agree with Horowitz.

Last September, Dr. Eugene Gangarosa of Atlanta’s Emory University, who is considered an expert on intestinal diseases, told OSHA that there was “a compelling need” to adopt the standard. He found that the rate of parasitic diseases among U.S. migrant workers was higher than that found in Guatemalan children.

“In effect, migrant farm workers represent subpopulations of the Third World within our country,” Gangarosa said during one of the hearings.

Jesse Ortiz, associate professor of environmental health at the University of Massachusetts, who also was hired by OSHA to review the evidence, agreed with Gangarosa’s major conclusions. “It has been proven beyond doubt that poor sanitation leads to poor health,” Ortiz said in a telephone interview. “All the medical testimony presented said it was necessary” that OSHA adopt a field sanitation standard, he said.

Excessive Health Risks

Gangarosa’s analysis of the record for OSHA said that farm workers suffer excessive risks for five major preventable health problems. Compared to the general population, farm workers are 7 to 26 times more likely to contract parasitic diseases, 9 to 85 times more likely to suffer from diarrhea, 3 times more likely to suffer chemical exposures and 5 times more likely to develop skin rashes--the latter two as a result of workers’ inability to quickly wash off the pesticides to which they are exposed. They are also 1 1/2 to 2 times likelier to suffer from heat stress, compared to workers in other high risk industries.

Both Ortiz and Gangarosa told the agency that adopting field sanitation standards would dramatically reduce the incidence of pesticide peril and intestinal disease. Gangarosa predicted also an 80% to 90% reduction in illness due to heat stress and a 25% to 40% reduction in skin rashes, simply by making water available to farm workers for drinking and hand-washing.

Gangarosa has told the agency that the lack of toilets and hand-washing facilities on farms creates health hazards for nearby communities and possibly for consumers of fresh produce.

However, last week OSHA director Rowland told a congressional subcommittee that he had not studied the reports of Gangarosa and Ortiz. And Rowland informed Rep. Joseph M. Gaydos (D-Pa.), chairman of the subcommittee on health and safety of the House Committee on Education and Labor, that he had divided his staff into two teams--one to develop a standard and the other to develop a rationale for not adopting a standard.

Rowland acknowledged that the lack of field sanitation “where it existed was deplorable,” according to persons at the subcommittee hearing. But he said that there was “no way to tell how widespread it (the lack of field sanitation) is.”

Magnitude of Problem

Last year, OSHA officials were given an indication of the magnitude of the problem in a study done for the agency by Centaur Associates, a Washington consulting firm. Despite laws in 13 states--including California--requiring varying degrees of field sanitation, more than a third of the farm workers in the nation have no toilets available, one in five has no hand-washing facilities and more than half are not provided with drinking water, according to the Centaur report.

Here, in Arizona, there is no uniform pattern. The Times interviewed some lettuce cutters outside a field where no toilet had been provided. “We don’t worry about it,” said one of the men. “There are no women in our crew, so, if we have to go, we just go where we are.” Another of the men remarked, “We’re on a piece rate; we don’t have time to stop.”

Abraham Coy, a young man interviewed in a nearby onion field, said that he was reluctant to use the toilet his employer provided because it was so rarely cleaned. Indeed, an examination of the portable toilet disclosed that it was filthy and fly-infested.

The women’s toilet was somewhat cleaner, but that is not always the case, said onion picker Maria Lerman, who complained that she had been forced to use an unsanitary toilet when working the fields during her pregnancy last year. “All we can do,” she said, “is ask when are you going to clean the bathroom? They treat us like animals.”

No Soap or Towels

Dora Duran, another veteran onion picker, said that many employers do not provide cool water to workers on hot days and that no employer she has worked for has provided soap or towels for hand-washing even though workers often came in contact with hazardous pesticides.

Patrick H. Quinn, executive vice president of the National Council of Agricultural Employers, a farm owner lobbying organization, argued that most growers are voluntarily doing what a federal law would require, a contention disputed by Horowitz of the Migrant Legal Action Project and others favoring a national standard.

According to Quinn, his organization is formally opposed to a federal field sanitation standard because there already is “substantial existing state coverage.” But, at the OSHA hearings last year, witnesses testified that there are widespread disparities in the vigor with which state laws--including California’s--are enforced.

Cost of Compliance Cited

Quinn said also that the costs of complying with a federal standard would be difficult for small employers to bear. A study done for OSHA estimated that the cost would be 55 cents to 80 cents a day per employee. “We feel those estimates are conservative,” Quinn said.

However, Quinn was quick to add that “we support field sanitation that will ensure the safety and health of farm workers. I think there’s at least as large a downside for the industry if no standard is promulgated. This will be cast as the product of a regressive grower lobby. Many people in the industry are prepared to live with a reasonable standard and would like to have this issue behind us.”

Rowland, OSHA’s acting director, refused to be interviewed for this story. His spokesman, Jack McDavitt, said also that it would be “inappropriate” for other agency officials to comment before a decision is made.