Kinderrechte Forscher von Human Rights Watch
Sagen Sie es dem EPA zum Schutz der Kinder vor Schädlingsbekämpfungsmitteln/Pestiziden
huffingtonpost.com
08/14/2014
Margaret Wurth
Children's rights researcher at Human Rights Watch
Tell the EPA to Protect Kids From Pesticides
"My head started hurting really bad, and I started seeing like all black." It was mid-afternoon on a scorching summer day in eastern North Carolina when "Jimena," a 14-year-old farmworker, walked into a tobacco field where she had been sent to work. No one told her that the field had been sprayed with pesticides just hours earlier. "I got really dizzy," she said, "and I started throwing up." She told me she was sick for two weeks.
Last summer, while I was investigating child labor on tobacco farms in the United States, I met dozens of children with similar stories. Of the 141 children my colleagues and I interviewed, half reported seeing tractors spraying pesticides in fields where they worked or in nearby fields. The kids said they could smell and feel the chemical spray as it drifted toward them. Many of them said they got sick afterward, with searing headaches, vomiting, shortness of breath, and skin rashes. What they didn't know was that pesticide exposure can have serious long-term health effects, especially for kids.
US government action to protect child farmworkers is long overdue. But for the first time in 20 years, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is planning to update the regulations designed to protect farmworkers from pesticide exposure. ...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/margaret- ... 80291.html
