Agricultural Chemical Safety Training Materials for Farmworkers: Review and Annotated Bibliography

Preventing or reducing exposure to agricultural chemicals is an important focus for health educators serving migrant and seasonal farmworkers and their families. The development of the US Environmental Protection Agency Worker Protection Standard requiring that farmworkers receive pesticide-related training created a demand for culturally appropriate and effective training materials, yet no compendium of such materials exists. This paper reports the results of a search for and evaluation of training materials designed for use with farmworkers. There is considerable redundancy in the training materials currently available to health educators. Few items address the health issue of chemical residues in the fields, an important source of low level chronic chemical exposure for farmworkers. There are no published evaluations of the effectiveness of any of the materials. Our review suggests the need for further development and testing of appropriate training materials to reduce the exposure of farmworkers to agricultural chemicals.