Targeting heat-linked deaths on Calif. farms
Fatalities on rise despite 2005 law
LANCASTER, Calif. - Jose Rosario Valencia started feeling nauseated just after 9 a.m. on July 17. His heart rate sped up, and his knees buckled.
Valencia was scared. He had heard of other farm workers dying of heat stroke in the fields.
“I thought about my family and how they would suffer,’’ said Valencia, 46, who moves irrigation pipes in the onion fields.
Though California passed a groundbreaking law in 2005 to protect farm workers from heat illness and death, there have been as many as 10 heat-related fatalities in the years since.
Among the victims in 2008 were a pregnant teenager who died when her body temperature climbed to 108 degrees after working in a Lodi vineyard and a 37-year-old man who suffered heat stroke after loading table grapes near Bakersfield.
The state has confirmed heat as the cause of six of the deaths and said it might have been a factor in the others.
Aiming to prevent any deaths this year, the state has expanded training for growers and outreach to workers and stepped up inspections of farms throughout California. But officials say limited resources have made it nearly impossible to ensure that all employers follow the law. There are only 201 inspectors to monitor all work sites in California, including roughly 35,000 farms.
The law, the first of its kind, requires growers to supply enough water for all employees and to provide shade for breaks when employees feel sick.
Companies are also required to conduct training on heat illness prevention and have an emergency plan in place for ill workers.
During sweeps earlier this year, inspectors with the state’s Occupational Safety and Health Division found numerous growers not following the law; they conducted 568 inspections and found 108 violations.
Cal-OSHA also temporarily shut down 10 farms for violating the heat standards and issued more than $45,000 in fines to those employers. At one farm in the Coachella Valley, inspectors found 15 workers sharing less than a gallon of water in 116-degree heat.
A recent lawsuit alleges that the state is failing to prevent heat-related illness and death among California’s farm workers.
Lawyers said employers ignore the requirements because they know there is little chance of getting caught.
Fines are issued, they said, but often reduced and infrequently collected.
