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Seeking Justice: Institutionalized Racism, Environmental Health, and Elite Contestation
Type of Session
Individual Paper Presentation
Abstract
Farmworkers and their families in the U.S. are disproportionately exposed to a variety of chemicals effects. The impacts of these exposures are compounded by farmworkers’ social vulnerability. They are often undocumented workers, sometimes paid informally, and they often lack access to adequate health care. It is extremely difficult for communities to establish causation between pesticide exposure and illness. Furthermore, it has been documented that medical professionals have been inconsistent in documenting cases of pesticide related illnesses due to lack of training in recognizing the symptoms (Brown and Kelley 2000; Kroll-Smith and Ladd 1993). Yet, in spite of the widespread incidence of environment-sourced illness among farmworkers, many people remain unaware of these issues in the agricultural system, and farmworkers continue to deal with the consequences of pesticide exposure and long-term health effects.
The agricultural industry began to emerge in the Lake Apopka area in Central Florida in 1883 after the Apopka-Beauclair Canal was constructed and revealed rich sediment in the marshlands. In 1941, a levee was constructed to expose more marshland for agriculture and use the lake water for weed control during the off-seasons. The agricultural industry focused on the development of 35 muck farms in the area surrounding Lake Apopka. Throughout the 1940s, the muck farmers started using DDT and other organophosphates for insect control.
Examining this case allows me to contribute to our understanding of institutionalized inequality, farmworker injustice, and environmental illnesses. Specifically, I ask how community members perceive and have experienced pesticide-related illnesses in the Lake Apopka area. I conduct interviews with farmworkers who worked on the muck farms in the Apopka area and their families. The purpose of the interviews is to examine farmworkers’ experiences in the field, their health problems and health issues in their families, and their experiences with the health care system.