4702-18 Declaring March 25-31 as Farmworker Awareness Week in South Bend, Indiana

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teus pr L«".1 H#Ak C«• A*Wsms 4 Kids younger than 12 often accompany their parents to work on American farms and fields. This means that farmworker children are being put at risk from a very young age—even before birth—from the pesticides, dangerous equipment, and other hazards populating those environments. Teenagers are permitted to operate various equipment from a young age, which corresponds to an increase in the rate of tragic accidents involving youth. Though children are at the height of vulnerability when they are still in the womb, there are inadequate protections for farmworkers who are expecting a child. Children also interact with their environment in fundamentally different ways than adults, yet this is not in regulators' minds when setting standards for things such as pesticide use. Here are some facts you should know about farmworker children. FACT#1: 400,000-500,000 children between the ages of 12-17 are estimated to be working in U.S. agriculture FACT#2: Under current U.S. law, youth working in agriculture do not receive the same protections provided to other working youth. FACT#3: Farmworker children who migrate must be uprooted from their homes, schools, and communities 2-3 times a year. FACT#4: Farmworker children's mental health is suffering. FACT#5: Agriculture is our country's most dangerous occupation for farmworker youth FACT#6: Pesticides are highly toxic, and the population most vulnerable to them is farmworker children. FACT#7: Pesticides increase the risk of developmental disorders in farmworker children. FACT#8: Pesticides cause childhood cancer in farmworker children. FACT#9: Valley Fever sickens farmworker children and their parents in the course of their work in the fields. FACT#10: Momentum has been building to ban all children from applying or handling pesticides. littp://afop.org/cif/#tab-id-2