"More on Disproportionate Impact
The authors of the above-mentioned report on disproportionate harm—Nathan Donley, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity and Robert Bullard, known as the 'Father of Environmental Justice' and executive director of the Robert D. Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice at Texas Southern University in Houston—address the impact on child farmworkers.
Children remain unprotected:
Following recommendations from the National Academy of Sciences, the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996 (FQPA) established a mandate that the EPA further protect children from pesticide harm due to their heightened susceptibility to chemical exposures. This protection came in the form of a 10X safety buffer, reducing allowable exposures to all people from pesticides by tenfold as a way of protecting young children and the developing fetus. Given that children are more susceptible to harm from pesticides and children of color are more likely to be exposed to pesticides, this was widely seen as one way to protect the most vulnerable of at-risk populations.
Unfortunately, Congress’s intent regarding protecting young children from pesticides has never been fully realized. The National Research Council found that the EPA only put in place the tenfold child safety factor for five out of 59 pesticides it analyzed, and a larger analysis of more than 400 pesticides by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that only 22% had the full safety factor utilized in approval decisions. A more recent analysis of 47 pesticides similarly found that only a small minority of pesticides that are present in food had any safety buffer incorporated for children.
The lack of adequate protections can hit certain communities particularly hard. For instance, over 50% of migrant children in the U.S. have an unmet health need compared to just over 2% of all children living in the U.S. Compounding stressors can significantly increase the sensitivity of children to pesticides and other pollutants. Without added protections, children of color and those in low-income households are more likely to remain unprotected."
"Bill Seeks to Eliminate Inequities for Child Farmworkers"
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