Pesticides: Improvements Needed to Ensure the Safety of Farmworkers and Their Children

A joint EPA/NIOSH effort produced a "How To" manual on tracking pesticide illnesses. This action implements the intent of GAO's recommendation.

In July 2004, EPA provided documentation of its efforts to mitigate potential adverse effects of pesticide exposure on children under 12 and farm workers in general. For example, EPA sent a Federal Register notice dated May 26, 2004, indicating that EPA has a cooperative agreement with the Association of Farm Worker Opportunity Programs (AFOP) through which EPA funds the National Pesticide Safety Education Program for agricultural workers and farm worker children. AFOP trains 25,000 farm workers and farm worker children every year about pesticide safety in over 50 sites in 16 states. AFOP also conducts pesticide safety training for children at childcare centers, schools, churches, and community centers, and has developed a handbook in Spanish. Also, through EPA funding, AFOP has developed radio programs targeted at preventing pesticide poisonings of children. (EPA provide GAO with transcripts of four public service announcements that, according to an EPA official, aired on 194 stations across the country on June 21-27, 2004, and are slated to air again in August 2004. Three out of the four announcements specifically mention health dangers to children.) The May 26, 2004 Federal Register Notice further states that EPA has initiated a program with the Migrant Head Start Program to develop materials and training on pesticide safety for migrant families, with specific attention to protecting children from pesticides. In addition, the notice states that EPA contributed funding for development of a bilingual pesticide safety training video entitled "The Playing Field," that uses the story of a girl poisoned by playing in a treated field to teach farmworkers and farmworker children about the dangers of pesticides and how to protect themselves. The notice also states that EPA's field offices are performing a number of outreach activities on pesticide safety for farm workers and their families. EPA provided GAO with 12 pages of examples of headquarters and regional efforts on pesticide safety for the workers and their families. In addition, EPA provided copies of two newspaper articles that it has developed about the risks of pesticide exposure for children and how to mitigate these risks. An EPA official indicated that the articles would be published in the Spanish press in August 2004.

EPA provided a presentation on its methods for estimating exposure from reentry activities and whether they were adequately protective of children's age at a December 2002 meeting of EPA's Health Protection Advisory Committee in Washington, D.C. EPA concluded that there was not a meaningful difference between the exposures for adults and teen workers. EPA provided GAO with copies of the briefing slides.

In July 2004, the Chief of the Agricultural Branch of the compliance section of EPA's Office of Enforcement sent a summary of actions taken by EPA to implement the recommendation, including the following. (1) EPA has issued a WPS inspection definition as an addendum to the fiscal year (FY) 2002/2003 Pesticide Cooperative Agreement Guidance. (2) Regarding the number of inspections to be conducted, EPA has provided guidance stating, "The appropriate number of inspections to be conducted in any state or tribal lands should be consistent with the number of farms and farm employees covered by WPS. The appropriate number of WPS inspections is to be negotiated between grantees and their Regional Offices." EPA believes this guidance achieves the objective of ensuring that WPS inspections are conducted while providing flexibility to the state/tribe to address resource and workload issues. (3) EPA's 2002/2003 Pesticide Cooperative Agreement Guidance included further guidance for regional oversight of the cooperative agreements, including consideration of the adequacy of dedicated state resources. (4) With regard to ensuring consistency in EPA's regional offices' oversight of the program, EPA has developed and distributed revised file review procedures to be used by EPA regions to review state and tribal WPS files. EPA has also developed a sample WPS-inspection checklist and inspector interview questions, to be distributed after a final review, and has developed a risk-based inspection targeting strategy, to be distributed in final form in August 2004. In addition, EPA continues to fund two inspector training courses per year. (5) EPA has a workgroup charged with collecting and analyzing data on WPS inspections and enforcement. EPA provided GAO with a compilation of these data for FY 2002 and FY 2003. Supplementary documentation concerning EPA training and specific enforcement actions was provided by the Enforcement Office's litigation section. While EPA has not set a specific number of WPS inspections per state as a goal, the agency has substantially implemented GAO's multipart recommendation to improve oversight.