Farmworkers face a variety of economic, structural, and cultural barriers to adopting safety practices in the field especially with the prevention of heat-related illness (HRI) and associated injuries. Farmworkers are at increased risk for HRI and even death because they are exposed to extreme heat while engaged in strenuous physical activity such as harvesting crops. Piece-rate models of payment encourage rapid work and serve as an economic disincentive to paying attention to safety messages. Some food crops may have specific field sanitation regulations that discourage the use of personal water bottles. Cultural barriers, such as language and the limits of traditional employer- education on heat risks may result in workers that are unaware of the symptoms of HRI, their risk factors, or what it means to be sufficiently hydrated at the start of the day. All of these features of the socio-ecologic setting of farm work create gaps in training, knowledge transfer, and the adoption of recommended behaviors.

Agricultural crew leaders occupy an important role for workers regarding HRI safety practices and compliance with regulations. This project utilizes the crew leader’s position to help them model and encourage good safety behaviors among their workers. Training to reduce heat stress has been designed for this specific audience and is currently implemented through a Cooperative Extension Farm Labor Supervisor training program. There are limitations, however, in knowledge transfer and it alone cannot bridge the gaps to behavior change that exist in the fields. If adopting HRI safety behavior and improving personal hydration can be linked to better worker productivity, companies and supervisors have an incentive to change programming. This project will use a social marketing approach to behavior change to help farm labor supervisors be more effective change agents with their workers. A quasi-experimental design will measure their traditional training with a culturally appropriate communications campaign to enhance their HRI safety communications.

The post Using Social Marketing to Prevent HRI and Improve Productivity Among Farmworkers first appeared on Southeastern Coastal Center for Agricultural Health and Safety.

Recently there has been a marked increase in occurrences of Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) in agricultural workers in Mesoamerica. The potential mechanism for this increase remains elusive; it may be associated with working in hot environments causing recurrent dehydration leading to decreased renal blood flow, high demands on tubular reabsorption, and increased levels of uric acid or possible activation of the fructokinase pathway. These underlying processes may result in chronic tubular injury and fibrosis.

In this study, the team will measure physiological indicators of heat-related illness (HRI) in farmworker populations in Florida, incorporating a metabolomics approach to enhance understanding of pathways through which perturbation of renal function occurs. We propose to determine if biomarkers of renal damage shown in Mesoamericans are also present among farmworkers residing in the U.S. that immigrated from Mexico to work in agriculture. We will recruit 70 agricultural workers in Pierson, Florida who are between 18 and 54 years of age, as well as 30 individuals of similar heritage who are not working in heat-intensive agricultural work such as mushroom facilities, packing houses, or hotel workers.

In this study, the team will measure physiological indicators of heat-related illness (HRI) in farmworker populations in Florida, incorporating a metabolomics approach to enhance understanding of pathways through which perturbation of renal function occurs. We propose to determine if biomarkers of renal damage shown in Mesoamericans are also present among farmworkers residing in the U.S. that immigrated from Mexico to work in agriculture. We will recruit 70 agricultural workers in Pierson, Florida who are between 18 and 54 years of age, as well as 30 individuals of similar heritage who are not working in heat-intensive agricultural work such as mushroom facilities, packing houses, or hotel workers.

In this exploratory work, the team proposes to 1) characterize the occupational environment of these workers including work practices, workplace heat exposure, and work intensity; 2) characterize the physiologic profile of these workers including body anthropometrics, dehydration, and self-reported heat-related illness symptoms; 3) determine if biomarkers indicating kidney injury are present (kidney injury molecule  1 (KIM-1), Beta-2 microglobulin (B2M), neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL), elevated blood urea nitrogen (BUN), creatinine, uric acid, uromodulin, and decreased glomerular filtration rate (GFR)) and if the presence and levels of these biomarkers in agricultural workers differ from controls who are not employed in agriculture; and 4) use non-targeted metabolomics analysis of blood plasma to explore the molecular mechanisms of renal dysfunction associated with occupational heat exposure.

This study will be the first to document the extent of association between heat exposure and CKD in a migrant farmworker population in the U.S. This study uses an innovative metabolomics analysis to describe possible metabolic pathways affected by heat exposure.

Additional Resources

Facing the Sun documentary – presented at the 2019 Global Health Film Festival hosted by the American public Health Association  Girasole documentary: Facing the Sun  

The post Heat Stress and Biomarkers of Renal Disease first appeared on Southeastern Coastal Center for Agricultural Health and Safety.

Farmworkers, the majority of whom are Latino immigrants from Mexico, experience elevated rates of occupational injury and illness. Chronic low-dose exposure to pesticides and extreme heat and humidity are major sources of poor occupational health outcomes. Recent revisions to the EPA’s Worker Protection Standard (WPS-r) and growing concern over heat-related illness (HRI) necessitate the creation of safety education curricula that to minimize pesticide exposure and the deleterious effects of exposure to heat and humidity. Use of community health workers or “promotoras de Salud”(promotoras) is common in farmworker occupational health, but few WPS or HRI curricula have been developed for dissemination by promotoras, and there is scant evidence that promotoras are equally effective as “professional educators” who often have college degrees or highly specialized training in the cognate material. 

The goal of this project is to reduce pesticide- and heat-related poor health outcomes among Latino farmworkers. We will achieve this goal through a community-advocate-university partnership that will: (1) Create reproducible, culturally- and contextually-appropriate curricula for Latino farmworkers targeting pesticide exposure (suitable for meeting employer requirements under the revised WPS) and HRI, (2) Determine the effectiveness of the developed pesticide and HRI curricula implemented by professional educators in promoting advocated safety behaviors, and (3) Identify the comparative effectiveness of a promotora-based implementation of developed curricula relative to the use of professional educators. This 5-year project will be undertaken in three phases. Phase one is an intervention with farmworkers (n=125) to determine the effectiveness of WPS-r and HRI curricula that will be developed from existing materials. Phase two uses a randomized attention control placebo design (n=325) to determine if our WPS-r curricula performs better than the EPA’s curricula. Phase 3 deploys the curricula to a large cohort of farmworkers (n=400) using a promotora model: collected data will determine the comparative effectiveness of promotoras relative to professional educators.

The post PISCA: Pesticide & Heat Stress Education for Latino Farmworkers that is Culturally Appropriate first appeared on Southeastern Coastal Center for Agricultural Health and Safety.

Commercial ocean fishing is one of the most dangerous occupations in the world. Workplace-related illnesses, injuries, and deaths are not uncommon for commercial seafood workers. Many of these adverse outcomes are avoidable in this majority self-employed, uninsured essential workforce. This surveillance research project will assess commercial fishery worker safety in the southeastern U.S., focusing on the coastal Gulf of Mexico workforce in Florida and Alabama.

In collaboration with our community partners, the team will develop, validate, and implement an in-person questionnaire to discern fishery subsector-specific hazards and adverse outcomes associated with occupational injuries, illnesses, and mortalities in the region. Study outcomes will generate meaningful data to represent this largely self-employed and uninsured workforce, and provide feedback to these workers to stimulate awareness and support empowerment for personal, work-related health and safety. Research to Practice (r2p) using findings from this surveillance study will include the development of culturally relevant outreach and hazard interventions for Gulf coastal communities. These interventions will promote safety knowledge, skills, and self-oversight to reduce occupational injuries, illnesses, and deaths. Specific goals for the proposed efforts represent T0 (surveillance) to T2 (intervention and evaluation) phase contributions in translational public health research. These include (1) surveillance to discern occupational hazards and risk factors, history of injuries, and knowledge of co-worker deaths for workers engaged in multiple fishery subsectors along the Gulf Coast of Florida and Alabama, and (2) development and assessment of potential intervention(s) to address risk factors associated with specific hazards and negative health outcomes in the different fishery subsectors in the project study region.

The post Occupational Health and Safety Surveillance of Gulf Seafood Workers first appeared on Southeastern Coastal Center for Agricultural Health and Safety.

Although agriculture represents a key industry in Florida, little recent information is available on the potential exposure of workers to various herbicides and pesticides that are needed to grow commercial food crops. We propose to develop estimates of the potential site-specific environmental exposures that should be expected, based on geographic extents of specific crops, daily local temperature, and precipitation regimes when ‘best practices’ are applied to the use of important pesticides and herbicides.

This study used historical (2009) data on state-wide pesticide applications for initial comparisons with the model that uses weather patterns during the growing seasons. Historical distributions of selected crops and temperature regimes were established using high and moderate resolution remotely sensed (RS) imagery and classification algorithms to identify the locations and extents of various crops. Time-series analyses of the RS imagery were used to establish the relationship between modeled phenology and spatial texture and patterns in croplands. This study also used 12 University of Florida agricultural research sites located throughout the state to confirm calibration both of the crop type signatures and the timing and impacts of herbicide/pesticide applications on resulting remotely sensed imagery.

The post Extent of Agricultural Pesticide Applications in Florida Using Best Practices first appeared on Southeastern Coastal Center for Agricultural Health and Safety.