Hundreds of millions of agricultural pesticides are sprayed on farm fields in California each year. Those pesticides affect the farm workers who labor in the fields and the communities nearby, where exposure is linked to increases in respiratory diseases, headaches, and even developmental disabilities. Most of the residents in those communities are people of color.
Claudia Melendez Salinas is a reporter for Voices of Monterey Bay. She recently reported on pesticides' impacts on residents in the Salinas Valley and California. Claudia recently met reporter Jonathan Linden at the KAZU studio. Meléndez Salinas first discussed María Isabel Ramirez, a Watsonville mother directly impacted by pesticide exposure.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Claudia Meléndez Salinas: María Isabel Ramirez came to the (United States), and came to work and live in Watsonville when she had one child. She was pregnant with her second child and lived in an area surrounded by fields. In Watsonville, there are a lot of strawberries, apple orchards, and all sorts of berries. And her second child, when he was two, she started noticing that he wasn't talking and that he was having a hard time walking. And she realized that there was something wrong. And then, the child got tested, and sure enough, he had developmental delays. She now has four children. Her second and third, because they were born and she was pregnant with them when they were living in (the Watsonville house), they both have developmental delays. And it's very sad because it's just going to be something they have to live with for life.
Jonathan Linden: And in your story, you talk about how Latino people are disproportionately affected by this. Can you elaborate more about that?
Claudia Meléndez Salinas: There are several studies done not just in California but throughout the United States. (They discuss) how these pesticides, in general, affect Latino people more in the fields. 80% to 90% of all the people who work in fields in the United States are people of Latino origin. So that's how it ends up happening, is that these pesticides are affecting Latinos more than any other group.
Jonathan Linden: You also talked with one of your sources about the air quality discrepancy for people who live along the coast, like in Monterrey, compared to the Salinas Valley. How big of an air quality difference is there between those two areas?
Claudia Meléndez Salinas: Well, that's one of the things that it's very difficult to pinpoint because there are no pesticide monitors. Like there are no pesticide monitors in Pacific Grove, and naturally so. They do not (grow anything) over there. The activists are asking for more monitors. So we do have air monitors for air quality. But the EPA is not asking to measure pesticides. If you do not have a federal requirement to measure those things, then you really don't know. And it is true that air quality, it's great along the coast, but inland, it's difficult to say, "this is the percentage of pesticides we have there," because there isn't anything to measure it.
Jonathan Linden: What is being done right now to get more of these pesticide monitors across the state?
Claudia Meléndez Salinas: The state right now is going to pilot a notification program. They are not talking about having the air monitors, but the notification is something that communities have been asking to establish, and the testing period is supposed to start this year. The notification system would be something that the communities that surround areas where farming is taking place, they would be notified.
Jonathan Linden: Can you talk about what was at the heart of you wanting to report on this issue?
Claudia Meléndez Salinas: Farmworkers feed us. They get up early in the morning, and yes, they're working to provide food for their families, but they're also providing food for us. They put their bodies on the line and the amount of red tape that there is for them to know where (what they are) breathing. And so I think that bringing to light these issues, so we can be more aware and perhaps support them one way or another. They deserve to have clean air to breathe all the time. They deserve for their children to grow up healthy.
Claudia Melendez Salinas is a reporter for Voices of Monterey Bay. Her recent report, “On the frontlines of pesticide exposure,” is the first of the three-part series “Adrift.” The series is a collaboration with Environmental Health News and palabra.