Cancer Cluster Claimed in Farm Town of Earlimart

A new cancer cluster among children of field workers has been found in the small Tulare County town of Earlimart, not far from the scene of a recent rash of cancers in McFarland, United Farm Workers President Cesar Chavez charged Thursday.

State health officials confirmed that there has been “an excess” of childhood cancers in Earlimart but said it is too early to know if it is significant.

Chavez described the five cases of cancer--out of about 1,050 youngsters who live in Earlimart--as more evidence that pesticide use by grape growers should be greatly reduced. The parents of the afflicted children work in local grape fields, including mothers of four children who worked in the fields while pregnant, the union said.

“Pesticides are always present in the vineyards where the parents work,” Chavez charged. “Children are exposed to them when they play outdoors, when they drink the water, when they hug their fathers and mothers returning from the fields.”

Chavez and a medical consultant to the union, Dr. Marion Moses, said the cancers have occurred in Earlimart at a rate 12 times higher than statistics for the general population would anticipate.

However, Dr. Eva Glazer of the state Department of Health Services said the rate is lower by her calculations. But an ongoing study of childhood cancers in Fresno, Kings, Kern and Tulare counties confirms that there is a “statistically significant” number of cancers in Earlimart, she said.

One of the Earlimart children, Jimmy Caudillo, 3, died in March after suffering leukemia, the UFW officials and parents said at a press conference in Delano. Natalie Ramirez, 4, lost a kidney to cancer. The other children range from age 10 to 14.

Chavez, whose union is trying to organize more grape workers, used the occasion to call for a broader boycott of California table grapes to pressure growers to cut back the use of pesticides. The union is already pressing a national boycott against grapes but with limited success.

Grapes are sprayed with more pesticide than any other fresh food crop, but the chemicals are not necessary for a bountiful harvest and the risk of cancer makes their use unjustified, Chavez contended.