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In the US, a portion of farmworkers speak an indigenous language as their primary language. These workers receive pesticide safety training in Spanish, which many indigenous people do not understand or understand only as a second language. Because they cannot comprehend the training materials, they are at an increased risk of exposure to pesticides.
Methods
We recruited 62 nursery workers who reported they spoke an indigenous language and randomly assigned them to a training intervention provided by community promotoras speaking and understanding indigenous languages (n = 30) or to a control group (n= 32) who did not receive specialized training. Urinary metabolite levels of 5 dialkylphosphates and knowledge of pesticide safety were obtained at baseline and 2-3 weeks post training.
Results
All of the farmworkers had detectable levels of metabolites at baseline with DMTP and DMP detected in 86% of the samples. Levels of metabolites decreased at post test for both the intervention and control groups even though the workers reported that pesticide use had increased in the nurseries during that time period. In the intervention group, 65% of the intervention group had lower metabolite levels compared to only 46% in the control group (Chi-square=1.793, df=1, n=49, p=0.181). Only 37.5% of the control group and 56.7% of the intervention group reported having received prior pesticide training. After the pesticide training, using a pairwise comparison, the intervention group showed a significant difference from baseline to post (p=0.050) while the control group did not (0.391). Over 50% of the intervention group improved their knowledge scores as a result of the training by indigenous speaking community workers.
Discussion
These initial results indicate that linguistically appropriate pesticide training can result in improved levels of knowledge and decreased pesticide exposure. Other personal and work-related factors potentially influencing results will be discussed.