"Hispanic Farmworkers Seek Tighter Controls on Pesticide Use"

"LOS ANGELES – Hispanic farmworkers in California poisoned by pesticides are demanding that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency exercise greater control over toxic substances used in agriculture.

“Two years ago we were picking grapes, some 50 of us workers, on a Guimarra company farm in Bakersfield, when a misty wave swept over us and everyone started coughing,” Artemisa Martinez, 43, told Efe.

“We left the field immediately, but I saw two women who stayed vomiting in the rows, one of them pregnant,” she said.

On the farm in the Las Curvas region where the laborers were working, Martinez said, a strong wind had swept in the pesticide from crops being sprayed nearby."

Ivan Mejia reports for the Latin American Herald Tribune December 15, 2009.