LOS ANGELES (AP) — While wildfires ravaged much of Sonoma County wine country in 2020, sending ash flying and smoke choking the air, Maria Salinas was harvesting grapes.
Her saliva turned black from inhaling the toxins, until one day she had such difficulty breathing that she had to be taken to the emergency room. When she got better, she immediately went back to work while the fires raged on.
“What forces us to work is necessity,” Salinas said. “We always expose ourselves to danger out of necessity, whether it’s fire or disaster, when the weather changes, when it’s hot or cold.”
As climate change increases the frequency and intensity of wildfires around the world, a new study shows that farmworkers are paying a high price by being exposed to high levels of air pollution. And in Sonoma County, the focus of the study, researchers found that a program designed to determine when it was safe to work during wildfires did not adequately protect farmworkers.
They recommended a number of measures to protect workers’ health, including monitoring air quality in workplaces, stricter requirements for employers, emergency plans and training in multiple languages, post-exposure health screenings and hazard pay.
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Farmworkers are “experiencing first and hardest what the rest of us are just beginning to understand,” Max Bell Alper, executive director of the North Bay Jobs with Justice union, said Wednesday during a webinar on the study published in July in the journal GeoHealth. “And I think in many ways that’s analogous to what’s happening across the country. What we’re experiencing in California is happening everywhere now.”
Farm workers face enormous pressure and must work in dangerous conditions. Many are poor and are only paid when they work. Others who are in the country illegally are even more vulnerable due to limited English skills, lack of social benefits, discrimination and exploitation. These realities make it harder for them to advocate for better working conditions and basic rights.
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Researchers examined data from the 2020 Glass and LNU Lightning Complex fires in Northern California’s Sonoma County, a region famous for its wine. During those fires, many farmworkers continued to work, often in evacuation zones deemed unsafe for the general population. Because smoke and ash can contaminate grapes, winemakers have been under increasing pressure to send workers into the fields.
The researchers examined air quality data from a single AirNow monitor, operated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to alert the public to dangerous levels, and from 359 monitors from PurpleAir, a company that offers sensors that people can install in their homes or businesses.
Firefighters try to prevent the Oak Fire from reaching a home in the Jerseydale community in Mariposa County, Calif., on Saturday, July 23, 2022. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)
From July 31 to November 6, 2020, the AirNow sensor recorded 21 days of air pollution that the EPA considers unhealthy for sensitive groups and 13 days of poor air quality that is unhealthy for everyone. The PurpleAir monitors detected 27 days of air that the EPA considers unhealthy for sensitive groups and 16 days of air that is toxic for everyone.
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And several times the smoke was worse at night. That’s an important detail because some employers asked their farm workers to work at night, in part because it was cooler and the smoke was less concentrated, said Michael Méndez, one of the researchers and an assistant professor at the University of California-Irvine.
“Hundreds of farmworkers were exposed to the toxic air quality of wildfire smoke, which could have adverse effects on their health,” he said. “There was no post-exposure monitoring of these farmworkers.”
The researchers also examined the county’s Agricultural Pass program, which allows farmworkers and others involved in agriculture to enter mandatory evacuation areas to perform essential work such as water supply or harvesting. They found that the permitting process lacked clear standards or established protocols and that the application’s requirements were rarely enforced. For example, in some cases, the applications did not include information on the number of workers at the work sites and did not provide detailed information on the locations of the work sites.
Flames and smoke rise as firefighters continue to battle the Park Fire near the city of Chico in the northern Sacramento Valley, California, U.S., July 25, 2024. Photo by Fred Greaves/REUTERS
Irva Hertz-Picciotto, a professor of public health sciences at the University of California-Davis who was not involved in the study, said the symptoms of inhaling wildfire smoke — eye irritation, coughing, sneezing and difficulty breathing — can occur within minutes of exposure to smoke containing particulate matter.
Exposure to these tiny particles, which can penetrate deep into the lungs and bloodstream, has been shown to increase the risk of numerous health problems, including heart and lung disease, asthma, and low birth weight. The effects are further aggravated when extreme heat is added to the mix. Another recent study found that inhaling tiny particles from wildfire smoke can increase the risk of dementia.
Anayeli Guzmán, who like Salinas was harvesting grapes during the Sonoma County fires, remembers feeling tired from the smoke and ash and feeling a burning sensation in her eyes and throat, but she never went to the doctor for a post-exposure check-up.
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“We don’t have that option,” Guzmán, who has no health insurance, said in an interview. “If I go for a check-up, I lose a day of work or have to pay the medical bill.”
In the webinar, Guzman said it was “sad that vineyard owners are only worried about the grapes” that could be contaminated by the smoke, rather than the impact the smoke would have on workers.
A 2021 report on farmworker health released by the University of California-Merced and the National Agricultural Workers Survey found that fewer than one in five farmworkers have employer-based health insurance.
Hertz-Picciotto said farmworkers are essential workers because the country’s food supply depends on them.
“From a moral and health point of view, it is truly reprehensible that the situation has escalated to this extent and no measures have been taken to protect farm workers. This document should play an important role in bringing this to light with concrete recommendations,” she said.
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