Pesticides

The overall objectives of this project are to evaluate emerging pesticide application technologies and educational programming as interventions for breaking the pesticide exposure pathway on Northwest fruit farming systems. Labor-intensive fruit commodities put farmworkers and their families at disproportionate risk of pesticide-related illness via pesticide handling, drift, or the take-home exposure pathways.

Previous studies have documented high levels of pesticide exposure among Latinx farmworkers. However, most research has focused almost exclusively on men, despite women representing an increasing proportion of the agricultural workforce. Some studies have indicated that women farmworkers experience Acute Pesticide Poisonings (APPs) at significantly higher rates than their male counterparts.