Agricultural workers perform a dangerous job – working with animals, pesticides, heavy machinery; they toil in rain and mist, on hills and earth sleep; and doing physically demanding tasks. Chronic back injuries, serious respiratory problems, and pesticide poisoning are common. Migrant farm-workers suffer from the highest rates of toxic chemical injuries of any group of workers in the US; the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that 300,000 farm-workers suffer acute pesticide poisoning each year.
Programme of Action
- Back-breaking labour
- Use of and exposure to pesticides and other inorganic chemicals, which pose health and home problems, including increasing suicide rates using pesticides
- Weather and terrain, both causing exhaustion, dehydration or death in the fields
- High incidence of accidents
- Fishing as one of the most dangerous activities, also next to mining
- Lack of protection and facilities such as toilets and clinics
- New technologies such as machines and tools
- Government and authorities not complying with international / national bans and standards
- Lack of regulation or compliance (if there is regulation) on health and safety in agriculture; lack of legal protection
- Trainings and campaigns on health and safety issues, i.e. Community based Pesticides Action Monitoring ( CPAM)
- Women and children-focused workshops on health and safety issues
- Campaign for protection measures and workers’ health insurance
- Campaign on the ban on pesticides
- Capacity building – awareness raising and trainings on pesticides
- Capacity building – awareness on the use of natural pest control
- Internationally coordinated campaign on occupational health and safety to raise public awareness – May 1 (30th year of Bhopal)
- Ratification and implementation of national and international conventions on health and safety – C184
Resources
2.28 MB
730 downloads
A Generation in Jeopardy
706.47 KB
789 downloads
Monograph on Paraquat
2.16 MB
617 downloads
Communities in Peril: Asian regional report on community monitoring of highly hazardous pesticide use
523.49 KB
789 downloads
Occupational health and safety of agricultural workers: ILO conventions and gaps
26.35 MB
741 downloads
