Migrants to stay while birth defects investigated

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/03/27/State/Migrants_to_stay_whil.shtml

By Associated Press
Published March 27, 2005
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IMMOKALEE - The president of one of Florida's largest produce companies has offered to help migrant workers whose children were recently born with severe birth defects stay in the area while health officials investigate the cause of the defects, officials said.
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One baby was born without arms or legs, and another with a partially formed jaw. A girl without a nose and no visible sexual organs died days after birth.
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The mothers gave birth within the last four months. They said they lived within 200 feet of one another at the same labor camp when they became pregnant. A sign at the field said more than two dozen pesticides and herbicides were used there. The women worked into their pregnancies at other fields that used the same chemicals.

Between 1999 and 2003, Ag-Mart was cited three times by state inspectors for violations of pesticide regulations at other fields. The violations involved failure to keep workers out of fields for a sufficient time after chemicals had been used, failure to provide proper protective equipment and failure to keep proper records of pesticide and herbicide use. Long has said those infractions were resolved.
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...isn't that area used to grow sugar and where thousands of acres of Everglades have been turned over for agricultural exploitation?

for a good number of years.... I'd tell you some things... but then I'd probably have to move to another country... what really bugged me out is that the people who were supposed to be guardians of the everglades, were more often than not, just handmaidens to the sugar industry, almost to the point (remove almost) of pumping when, where and how much. You can find out at "scorecard.org" who does what in and around Palm Beach County by entering 33412 in the zip search window. By who does what I mean, the tonnage of various pollutants released into the environment.

While the pretzeldent relaxes environmental thingies and babies are born half dead, he sticks his nose in a case where it never belonged. The schizophrenia that has enveloped this country is a sign that it is headed down the wrong road.... once again.

www.scorecard.org

www.saveoureverglades.org

http://www.floridaplants.com/group.htm

DUH !!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

Tish Hinojosa wrote a song called "Something in the Rain" about migrant workers exposed to pesticides. It is routine for companies notto even tell the workers when they are spraying. They get very little health care generally and there are no OSHA protections for them.

But for many, many years, pesticide companies were not required to included usage instructions in Spanish, even though most of the people handling them spoke no English. In fact, many of the agricultural companies deliberately did not put up instructions for proper handling of pesticides because of the extra expense of special gloves and suits, additional water sources, etc.

But this doesn't just happen to migrant workers. A former coworker in her mid-20s developed a rare reproductive cancer that normally only afflicts women above the age of 70. The number of young women being diagnosed with it was spiking so much that she ended up being interviewed by researchers at, I believe, Johns Hopkins. One thing they were especially interested in was the fact that she grew up in Oklahoma farm country.

is the same one that provides poor care, no healthcare, etc. At least with bona fide slavery, one had a vested interest in keeping slaves healthy; with defacto slavery, there's plenty more where those came from.

Because illegal aliens or "undocumented" aliens are under the radar, no one even knows the true numbers, who is where, and cannot monitor if they disappear.

I have reached the point that I cannot see any good nor value given to the world at large through publicly traded corporate business. It took me a long time to reach the overarching generalization of all; but at this point, coporations with ethics tend to be small and not publicly traded. Big corporations have lost ethics and morality over decades to where "everybody is doing it."

The coming chaos coming due to peak oil issues may very well bring corporations down and I wouldn't give a rats ass. They have s*cked the life's blood out of the world's poor and they are making new poor every day through their greed.