Lax oversight, few inspections leave child farmworkers exposed to toxic pesticides

California’s top agricultural counties conducted just one safety inspection for every 146 times pesticides were sprayed on fields in 2023, leaving workers vulnerable.

Over six years, 240 farm businesses were cited for pesticide violations across multiple counties. But those businesses often escaped fines, allowing repeat offenders to avoid accountability.

Dozens of underage farmworkers and their parents described headaches and rashes from pesticide exposure, with official cases likely undercounted due to worker fears of employer retaliation.

Hundreds of thousands of times each year in California, farmers and their contractors spray pesticides on fields and orchards in the state’s agricultural heartlands.

Farmworkers young and old can be exposed to dangerous concentrations of toxic chem