This issue highlights three students who have worked with WCAHS Associate Director, Dr. Kent Pinkerton, to better understand how exposure to California agricultural particulate matter contributes to allergic airway inflammation.
WCAHS welcomes new investigator Dr. Christopher Simmons to the research team. Simmons, an Assistant Professor in the UC Davis Department of Food Science and Technology, will be conducting a study on biosolarization as an alternative technology to soil fumigation. Soil fumigants are used to kill nematodes, weeds, bacteria, fungi, and insects that damage crops. Here, he talks about his research.
Agricultural health and safety will be featured at the upcoming Migrant Labor and Global Health (MLGH) Conference to be held at UC Davis March 2-3, 2017.
A good heat illness prevention plan takes into account the need for more breaks, a cool place to rest, the availability of fluids, and the careful allotment of time for a worker to become fully adjusted or acclimatized to the heat.
You can easily find out using CalEnviroScreen, an online environmental health screening tool that scores each of the state’s 8000 census tracks for pollution burden and population characteristics.
WCAHS celebrated California Ag Day 2016 at the State Capitol on March 16th. California Ag Day is an annual event that celebrates the amazing diversity and productivity of California agriculture and the people who work in it.
Eddie and his co-workers have been working throughout the summer season on CA farms to better understand how to prevent heat illness associated with farm work. Data collected includes the internal temperature of participants as they work, how much water they drink, and on-site weather conditions.
Professor Fadi Fathallah, engineer Victor Duraj, and others at the UC Agricultural Ergonomics Research Center (UC AERC) are continuing their earlier work funded by NIOSH Community Partners for Healthy Farming Intervention that showed some workers who harvest peaches and nectarines prefer a ladder with shorter spacing between steps.
Independent Hmong farmers can learn about USDA financial assistance available to them through a bilingual video produced by the National Hmong American Farmers (NHAF).
The PBS FRONTLINE 2013 documentary, “Rape in the Fields,” highlights undocumented women from California’s Salinas and Fresno areas as well as Washington’s Yakima Valley experience with sexual harassment and rape suffered at the hands of their supervisors.
