percent of residents are Mexican-Americans -- depend on farming for their livelihood. These numbers, researchers say, do not include migrant and undocumented workers who work only part of the year.
A preschool teacher recently told Marie that her son’s reading skills are below average. “I worry about him constantly,” Marie says. “I ask his older sister to read to him every day, because my English is not so good.”
Marie and her husband work in the fields, and armed with more information about the effects of pesticides on her children, she is taking all the steps she can to reduce the family’s exposure.
“I wash my husband’s clothes separately from the (rest of the) family’s laundry,” says Marie, adding that she also tries to buy organic food, at least a few times every month, despite the extra cost.
Jesus Lopez, a community leader in Salinas for over two decades and an outreach officer for California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, says that for a family earning less than $30,000 a year, spending even $3 extra to launder work clothes separately can be tough.
His nonprofit has developed community-driven programs to help offset the burden on farm worker families. The group, in collaboration with the CHAMACOS research project, has set up facilities for farm workers to wash up before going home.
"Usually a farm worker picking celery bends about 18 to 22 times a minute," says Lopez, noting that in a nine-hour work day, that amounted to a farm worker bending down about 10,000 times.
“Do you think they have the energy to follow all the instructions on reducing pesticide exposure after work, like washing up at the work place?" Lopez said.
He added that safety and health concerns about pesticide use could be avoided with a shift to organic production. In the meantime, Marie is keeping a watchful eye on her son’s reading progress.
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