There is no simple answer to the question of how many farmworkers are
poisoned by pesticides, because there is no national pesticide incident
reporting system. In any case, incident reporting systems at best
capture the tip of the iceberg of acute poisonings. Nonetheless, there
is good news on this front. The EPA has now agreed to establish a
national incident reporting system, based on existing programs. This
will probably be launched in 2005 or 2006. Please paraticipate by
reporting incidents.

No on to the data that we do have. Here is some:

EPA estimates 10,000 – 20,000 cases of physician diagnosed
pesticide-related illness among farmworkers each year (EPA, WPS
Economic Impact Statement 1993).

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics finds that farm workers suffer the
highest rate of chemical-related illness of any occupational group: 5.5
per 1,000 workers. 52 Fed. Reg. 16,050, 16,059 (1987).

Based on 468 cases from SENSOR program in 7 states, NIOSH found an
incidence rate of 18.2 per 100,000 agricultural workers (Calvert et al.,
Acute Occupational Pesticide-related Illnesses in the U.S., 1998-1999:
Surveillance Findings from the SENSOR – Pesticides Program, by Amer.
Journal of Industrial Med, 45:14-23 (2004).

In CA, there were 1,316 confirmed cases in 2002, of which 702 (53%)
occurred in agriculture.
Between 1993-1996, 63,000 reports of unintentional exposure to
organophosphate insecticides were received by US poison control centers;
nearly 25,000 of which related to children under age 6



CALIFORNIA INCIDENT REPORTS 1995 – 2002

YR TOTAL REPORTED CASES CASES AT LEAST POSSIBLY RELATED TO PESTICIDES
AGRICULTURE USE
2002 1,859 1,316 702 (53%)
2001 979 616 192 (31%)
2000 1,144 893 417 (47%)
1999 1,629 1,201 555 (46%)
1998 1,481 998 336 (37%)
1997 1,806 1,319 545 (41%)
1996 2,229 1,580 696 (44%)
1995 2,401 1,593 656 (41%)