New and Emerging Research in Agricultural, Forestry, and Fishing Safety and Health - Agriculture Forestry and Fishing Research at NIOSH - page 174

The transition to a biofuels-based economy will alter the use of land, the types
of crops planted, and the use of pesticides and machinery. With corn production
concentrated in the Midwest, forestry biomass in the South and West, sugar pro-
duction in the South and Midwest, and grass-based biomass on the High Plains,
there could be a shift toward working in rural America and later a substantial in-
crease in resource use. Those changes would be accompanied by the potential for
additional safety and health issues that need to be considered by NIOSH:

• How will crop production technologies, seasonal work cycles, and distri-
bution and transportation of raw materials and products? For example, if ethanol
plants are built in rural communities, large concentrations of trucks will be trans-
porting grain, other bulk byproducts, and ethanol to and from plants on two-lane
roads. How will that affect the safety of rural residents? Could increased traffic in
rural areas lead to an increase in collisions?
• How will new dedicated energy crop production systems affect worker

safety?
• Will reduction in fossil fuel use by agricultural producers change exposures
to farm equipment-related morbidity and injuries?

Farm-Labor Housing
The central importance of housing conditions for health status has been well
understood in the public health community for more than a century. The first effort
to address the living conditions specifically of hired farm laborers was California's
1915 Labor Camp Act, a response to horrific labor camp conditions that led to the
Wheatland Hop Riot of 1913. There have been serious improvements in housing
conditions of many migrant farm laborers, but virtually all recent health survey
research have demonstrated that a large share of this workforce is still experienc-
ing unwarranted risks to health that are associated with their housing conditions.
Pesticides carried into a residence on work clothes, lack of refrigeration for food
storage, absence of sanitary facilities, and extreme overcrowding have all been
linked to adverse health outcomes in farm laborers. Forestry services workers and
fishermen may also face similar housing issues. The issue is complex: socioeco-
nomic status, housing conditions, risky behavior, workplace exposure, and immi-
grant worker acculturation may all be linked in unknown ways to observed health
outcomes. The challenge to public health investigators to untangle those factors is
daunting, and the committee recommends that NIOSH pursue such effort without
further delay.