Program Scoring and Rationale - Agriculture Forestry and Fishing Research at NIOSH - page 153

Influencing Policy
In California, current state law requires labor contractors to participate annu-
ally in continuing education intended to improve their personnel practices, and
safety is a key component of the curriculum. That policy developed from the find-
ings of a survey of the employment practices of California's farm labor contractors
during the late 1980s and early 1990s, when many farm operators turned to labor
contractors for their short-term labor needs. The WCAHS and the California De-
partment of Employment Development supported the research, which included
interviews of more than 180 farm labor contractors (California EDD, 1992) that
eventually led the Agricultural Personnel Management Program (APMP) of UC
Cooperative Extension and the California Institute for Rural Studies to initiate
training workshops to address their needs.
The establishment of reliable standards and more accurate techniques for in-
field measurement of acetylcholinesterase (AChE) depression in the blood serum
of workers was a factor in encouraging the State of Washington to provisionally
require analogous measurement of AChE depression among hired farm workers in
that state. That decision was based in large part on the WCAHS research (Wilson,
1996). Measurement of this biomarker is in workers who may have been exposed
to organophosphate pesticides and is required under California pesticide regula-
tions, but techniques for in-field measurements had previously yielded statistically
unstable results in many cases, so the improvements to the tests made results more
reliable and credible.
Role of Occupational Safety and Health Journals
Scientists and practitioners need mechanisms for communicating, and support
from the AFF Program for two journals that address agricultural safety and health
have provided just that. The Journal of Agromedicine and the Journal of Agricultural
Safety and Health serve as a central clearinghouse for the publication and dis-
semination of research findings. Clearly these journals serve the community in a
fundamentally critical way and facilitate the work of scientists and practitioners.
ADDITIONAL COMMENTS ABOUT RELEVANCE
The committee assigned the AFF Program a score of 4 for relevance because
it found that research has been in high-priority and priority subject areas, and
research has resulted in some successful transfer activities. The following section
elaborates on this finding.
The AFF Program has engaged in some high-priority research areas and has
done an adequate job of addressing major problems. Several relevant, effective,