Screenshot from “Tainted Air” webinar.
Webinar zeroes in on problems and solutions for farmworkers exposed to wildfire smoke
Farmworkers suffer from high levels of pollution during wildfires and they need protection through better air quality monitoring, a panel of scholars, scientists and community advocates said during the Aug. 16 webinar “Tainted Air: Air Quality Monitoring and the Safety of Farmworkers in Wildfire Mandatory Evacuation Zones.”
Moderated by UC Irvine Assistant Professor of urban planning and public policy Michael Méndez, the webinar was based on the findings of a National Science Foundation-funded study published July 7 in GeoHealth. Joining Méndez on Zoom were his fellow study co-authors Rebecca Hornbrook and Rebecca Buchholz, who are project scientists with the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research, independent researcher Kevin Christensen and lead author Carlo Chunga Pizarro, a UCI urban planning and public policy doctoral student.
Other webinar discussants included Max Bell Alper, executive director of the North Bay Jobs with Justice advocacy organization, and Anayeli Guzman, a farmworker organizer.
“This research is particularly important because over the last years in California we experienced a major climate change crisis, a series of compounding events, particularly around wildfire and wildfire smoke,” said Méndez near the beginning of the webinar. “For example, the 2020 fires in California created an economic impact of $3.7 billion or what is called ‘smoke taint.’ Smoke taint occurs when smoke and ash permeate the skin of grapes, which can affect the taste and smell of wine, making it unsellable. However, too much concern is often placed on the impacts to the wine industry but not on the farmworkers who are harvesting the crops during wildfire events, and how their lungs are also being tainted. They are not provided adequate occupational health and safety protections, let alone hazard pay or federal disaster funds.”
Pizarro, whose research focuses on undocumented communities engaged in disaster planning, talked about how the study centered on Northern California’s Sonoma County wine country around the time of two of the devastating 2020 wildfires. Many of that particular region’s farmworkers are undocumented indigenous people from Mexico who speak neither English nor Spanish and isolate themselves out of fear of deportation, which complicated their ability to obtain disaster pay, healthcare and other needed services during and after the wildfires, he explained.
Under the Ag Pass Program established in 2017, owners could require farmworkers to enter evacuation zones to work the fields, but the research team’s public records investigation found inaccuracies when it came to how many farmworkers were sent to the zones, the locations of the zones and the duration of their stays in them, Pizarro said.
Buchholz, whose current research focuses on global climate chemistry modeling and remote sensing, said that during Sonoma County’s wildfires, air quality monitors detected extremely tiny particles that can be inhaled deep into lungs and affect one’s short-term and long-term health.
The Environmental Protection Agency advises not just sensitive individuals but everyone to avoid outdoor activities when the air is at the unhealthy it was from the Sonoma County wildfires, Buchholz noted.
Hornbrook, whose research interest centers on the atmospheric emissions and fates of natural anthropogenic volatile organic compounds, has participated in the development and deployment of state-of-the-art instrumentation to measure VOCs in the atmosphere. Unhealthful air lingered for more than two weeks in the Ag Pass areas, according to Hornbrook.
The use of local low-cost sensor data with recommended filtering and smoke correction enhances health and safety air quality monitoring, according to the National Center for Atmospheric Research project scientists.
A slide that flashed on the screen detailed the panel’s six proposed policy recommendations, which ranged from local, real-time air quality monitoring in wildfire zones to hazard pay and health screenings for exposed farmworkers.
“This research highlights the need to prioritize the health and safety of farmworkers, especially as wildfires become more common and severe due to climate change,” concludes the study.
— Matt Coker