LOS ANGELES (AP) — As wildfires scorched swaths of land in the wine country of Sonoma County in 2020, sending ash flying and choking the air with smoke, Maria Salinas harvested grapes.
Her saliva turned black from inhaling the toxins, until one day she had so much trouble breathing she was rushed to the emergency room. When she felt better, she went right back to work as the fires raged on.
“What forces us to work is necessity,” Salinas said. “We always expose ourselves to danger out of necessity, whether by fire or disaster, when the weather changes, when it’s hot or cold.”
As climate change increases the frequency and intensity of wildfires around the world, a new study shows that farmworkers are paying a heavy price by being exposed to high levels of air pollution. And in Sonoma County, the focus of the work, researchers found that a program aimed at determining when it was safe to work during wildfires did not adequately protect farmworkers.
They recommended a series of steps to safeguard the workers' health, including air quality monitors at work sites, stricter requirements for employers, emergency plans and trainings in various languages, post-exposure health screenings and hazard pay.
Farmworkers are “experiencing first and hardest what the rest of us are just starting to understand," Max Bell Alper, executive director of the labor coalition North Bay Jobs with Justice, said Wednesday during a webinar devoted to the research, published in July in the journal GeoHealth. "And I think in many ways that’s analogous to what’s happening all over the country. What we are experiencing in California is now happening everywhere.”
Farmworkers face immense pressure to work in dangerous conditions. Many are poor and don't get paid unless they work. Others who are in the country illegally are more vulnerable because of limited English proficiency, lack of benefits, discrimination and exploitation. These realities make it harder for them to advocate for better working conditions and basic rights.
Researchers examined data from the 2020 Glass and LNU Lightning Complex fires in northern California's Sonoma County, a region famous for its wine. During those blazes, many farmworkers kept working, often in evacuation zones deemed unsafe for the general population. Because smoke and ash can contaminate grapes, growers were under increasing pressure to get workers into fields.
The researchers looked at air quality data from a single AirNow monitor, operated by the Environmental Protection Agency and used to alert the public to unsafe levels, and 359 monitors from PurpleAir, which offers sensors that people can install in their homes or businesses.
From July 31 to Nov. 6, 2020, the AirNow sensor recorded 21 days of air pollution the EPA considers unhealthy for sensitive groups and 13 days of poor air quality unhealthy for everyone. The PurpleAir monitors found 27 days of air the EPA deems unhealthy for sensitive groups and 16 days of air toxic to everyone.
And on several occasions, the smoke was worse at night. That’s an important detail because some employers asked farmworkers to work at night due in part to cooler temperatures and less concentrated smoke, said Michael Méndez, one of the researchers and an assistant professor at University of California-Irvine.
"Hundreds of farmworkers were exposed to the toxic air quality of wildfire smoke, and that could have detrimental impact to their health," he said. “There wasn’t any post-exposure monitoring of these farmworkers.”
The researchers also examined the county's Agricultural Pass program, which allows farmworkers and others in agriculture into mandatory evacuation areas to conduct essential activities like water or harvest crops. They found that the approval process lacked clear standards or established protocols, and that requirements of the application were little enforced. In some cases, for example, applications did not include the number of workers in worksites and didn't have detailed worksite locations.
Irva Hertz-Picciotto, a professor of public health sciences at the University of California-Davis who was not part of the study, said symptoms of inhaling wildfire smoke — eye irritation, coughing, sneezing and difficulty breathing — can start within just a few minutes of exposure to smoke with fine particulate matter.
Exposure to those tiny particles, which can go deep into the lungs and bloodstream, has been shown to increase the risk of numerous health conditions such as heart and lung disease, asthma and low birth weight. Its effects are compounded when extreme heat is also present. Another recent study found that inhaling tiny particulates from wildfire smoke can increase the risk of dementia.
Anayeli Guzmán, who like Salinas worked to harvest grapes during the Sonoma County fires, remembers feeling fatigue and burning in her eyes and throat from the smoke and ash. But she never went to the doctor for a post-exposure health check up.
“We don't have that option,” Guzmán, who has no health coverage, said in an interview. “If I go get a checkup, I'd lose a day of work or would be left to pay a medical bill.”
In the webinar, Guzman said it was “sad that vineyard owners are only worried about the grapes” that may be tainted by smoke, and not about how smoke affects workers.
A farmworker health survey report released in 2021 by the University of California-Merced and the National Agricultural Workers Survey found that fewer than 1 in 5 farmworkers have employer-based health coverage.
Hertz-Picciotto said farmworkers are essential workers because the nation's food supply depends on them.
“From a moral point of view and a health point of view, it's really reprehensible that the situation has gotten bad and things have not been put in place to protect farmworkers, and this paper should be really important in trying to bring that to light with real recommendations," she said.
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FILE - A home on Millie May Lane is destroyed by a fire in Vacaville, Calif., on Thursday, Aug. 20, 2020. Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group via AP, File)
FILE - A man glances up at a tree that is blocking his way while attempting to go home after a fire ravaged the area on Mix Canyon Road in Vacaville, Calif., on Thursday, Aug. 20, 2020. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group via AP, File)
Israeli strikes on Palestinian territories have killed more than two-dozen Palestinians on Wednesday, according to local officials. They say an Israeli airstrike killed five Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, and at least 20 people, including 16 women and children, were killed in the Gaza Strip.
Gaza’s Health Ministry says Tuesday's strike on a tent camp in an Israeli-designated humanitarian zone killed at least 19 people.
The Health Ministry says over 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the Israel-Hamas war began. It does not differentiate between fighters and civilians in its count. The war has caused vast destruction and displaced around 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million, often multiple times.
Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in their Oct. 7 attack that sparked the war. They abducted another 250 and are still holding around 100. Around a third of them are believed to be dead.
Here's the latest:
JERUSALEM — A fuel tanker crashed into a bus stop in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, seriously injuring one person in what Israeli officials said was an attack.
The Israeli military said the driver was “neutralized” at the scene after the incident on Wednesday. It did not immediately identify the driver or provide evidence that the crash was an attack.
The Magen David Adom rescue service said it was treating the man who was injured, saying he is in critical condition.
Palestinians have carried out a number of stabbing, shooting and car-ramming attacks against Israelis in recent years. The army carries out near-daily raids into Palestinian communities in the West Bank that it says are aimed at dismantling militant groups and preventing attacks.
The violence has escalated since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack ignited the war in Gaza.
RAMALLAH, West Bank — The Palestinian Health Ministry in the West Bank says an ongoing polio vaccination campaign in the Gaza Strip has reached 82.5% of targeted children.
The ministry said on Wednesday that 527,776 children under the age of 10 have received the first dose of the vaccine across the war-ravaged enclave.
The campaign began earlier this month after the detection of the first confirmed polio case in Gaza in 25 years. It aims at vaccinating about 640,000 children there.
Israel agreed to limited humanitarian pauses to facilitate the campaign, according to the World Health Organization, and there have been no major disruptions from the ongoing war.
The Palestinian Health Ministry in the Israeli-occupied West Bank is part of the Palestinian Authority, whose forces were driven out of Gaza when Hamas seized power there in 2007 and set up its own government.
The two Palestinian health ministries coordinate with one another and exchange information.
TEL AVIV, Israel — The Israeli military says two Israeli soldiers died and seven were injured when their helicopter crashed in the southern Gaza Strip.
The military said Wednesday that the overnight helicopter crash was not the result of enemy fire and is under investigation. The helicopter was on a mission to evacuate wounded soldiers from Gaza for treatment in Israeli hospitals.
There have been 340 Israeli soldiers killed since the ground operation began in Gaza in late October, at least 50 of whom have been killed in accidents within Gaza — not as a result of combat with Palestinian militants, according to the military.
JERUSALEM — An Israeli official says dozens of Palestinian patients were expected to leave the Gaza Strip on Wednesday by way of an Israeli crossing, in order to travel to the United Arab Emirates for medical care.
The official says over 200 people, mostly children, are expected to leave, along with relatives to accompany them. It is the biggest exit of medical patients through Israel since the war erupted nearly a year ago.
Gaza has been completely sealed off since May, when Israeli forces captured the Gaza side of the border with Egypt, including the Rafah crossing between Egypt and the coastal strip, leading to its closure. Rafah had been the only entry or exit point for Palestinians, including medical patients, since the start of the war.
Since then, Israel has only allowed a small number of children and accompanying relatives to leave for medical treatment.
Israel’s military offensive, launched in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, has gutted Gaza’s already fragile health system. With few exceptions, Israel has barred Gaza’s Palestinians from entering Israel throughout the war.
The official says the patients are leaving through the Kerem Shalom crossing and heading to the Ramon airport in southern Israel, where they will board a flight to the UAE.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity pending a formal announcement by Israeli authorities.
— By Josef Federman in Jerusalem;
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Hamas released the first public statement from Yahya Sinwar since he was appointed its overall leader in August.
In the written statement late Tuesday, Sinwar congratulated Algeria’s President Abdelmadjid Tebboune on his reelection and thanked the country for its support for the Palestinian cause. Algeria, the Arab representative on the United Nations Security Council, circulated a draft resolution in May demanding an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and a halt to Israel’s military operation in the southern city of Rafah.
A hard-liner within Hamas, Sinwar would have to approve any potential agreement for a cease-fire and hostage release. The United States, Qatar and Egypt have spent most of the year trying to broker such a deal but the negotiations have repeatedly stalled.
Sinwar was one of the architects of the Oct. 7 attack into Israel that ignited the war in Gaza. He has not been seen since the start of the war and is believed to be alive and hiding inside the territory. Israel has vowed to kill him.
RAMALLAH, West Bank — An Israeli airstrike has killed five Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian officials say.
The Israeli military said it targeted a group of militants in the northern city of Tubas early Wednesday.
The Palestinian Health Ministry in the West Bank confirmed the toll but does not say whether those killed by Israeli fire are militants or civilians.
Israel has stepped up its military raids across the territory in recent weeks and says it is working to dismantle militant groups and prevent attacks. Palestinians say such operations are aimed at cementing Israel’s seemingly open-ended military rule over the territory.
Israel captured the West Bank, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians want all three territories for their future state. The West Bank has seen a surge in violence since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack out of Gaza ignited the war there.
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Palestinian officials say Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip have killed at least 20 people, including 16 women and children.
An airstrike early Wednesday killed 11 people, including six siblings ranging from 21 months to 21 years old, according to the European Hospital, which received the casualties. The dead from the strike near the southern city of Khan Younis included three other women, a child and a man, according to the hospital.
A strike late Tuesday on a home in the urban Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza killed nine people, including six women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry and the Civil Defense first responders. The Civil Defense says the home belonged to Akram al-Najjar, a professor at the al-Quds Open University, who survived the strike.
Israel says it only targets militants, claiming 17,000 militant deaths without providing evidence. It blames civilian deaths on Hamas because its fighters are embedded in dense residential neighborhoods. The military rarely comments on individual strikes, which often kill women and children.
The Health Ministry says Israel’s offensive, launched in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, has killed at least 41,020 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded nearly 95,000. It does not distinguish between fighters and civilians but says more than half of those killed were women and children.
Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, on Oct. 7 and abducted around 250. Around 100 hostages are still held in Gaza, about a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Blindfolded and bounded protesters take part in a protest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government and call for the release of hostages held in the Gaza Strip by the Hamas militant group in Tel Aviv, Israel, Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
This undated photo released by the Israel Defense Forces shows the Gaza tunnel where it says six Israeli hostages were recently killed by Hamas militants. (Israeli Army via AP)
Mourners pray over the covered bodies of Palestinians who were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a crowded tent camp housing Palestinians displaced by the war in the Muwasi, outside the hospital morgue in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians look at the destruction after an Israeli airstrike on a crowded tent camp housing Palestinians displaced by the war in Muwasi, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024. An Israeli strike killed at least 40 people and wounded 60 others early Tuesday, Palestinian officials said. Israel said it targeted "significant" Hamas militants, allegations denied by the militant group. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians look at the destruction after an Israeli airstrike on a crowded tent camp housing Palestinians displaced by the war in Muwasi, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024. An Israeli strike killed at least 40 people and wounded 60 others early Tuesday, Palestinian officials said. Israel said it targeted "significant" Hamas militants, allegations denied by the militant group. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Mourners carry the covered bodies of Palestinians who were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a crowded tent camp housing Palestinians displaced by the war in the Muwasi, outside the hospital morgue in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
