Fields of Poison

Sunnyside, Washington

Each summer as the grapes clinging to their vines turn the purple of a deep bruise, Juan Rios feels like he is being poisoned. His head aches, he feels dizzy and nauseous, and his nose won't stop running. A farmworker who moved to this agricultural valley from Mexico, Rios sprays pesticides at a winery from 3 am to 3:30 pm, five days a week. The pesticides protect the grapes from insects, but Rios suspects that these chemicals are making him sick.

"I remember the first time I worked with the pesticides, I was wearing a full mask while we were spraying, but my nose, it wouldn't stop bleeding. I was worried," says Rios, 39, sitting beneath a portrait of Cesar Chavez and a Mexican flag that hang proudly here in the United Farm Workers union local. "I went to the doctor but he didn't do anything; he just told me to stop working with the pesticides."

For a while he worked in the fields picking instead, but he soon returned to his old job. As a pesticide handler at a unionized winery, Rios, the father of two young girls, makes $10 an hour, $3 more than the average Washington farmworker who picks asparagus or thins apples. Plus, he says with a shrug, as long as he works in agriculture, he is exposed to the chemicals. "I know that the only way things will change is if I stop working in the fields," says Rios, "but agriculture is a huge force here--there really are no other options." Rios is not alone. As many as 300,000 farmworkers are injured annually by pesticides, and of these as many as 1,000 die, according to the most recent available estimate from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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