These children are likely to have the highest exposure to pesticides of any group of people in the country. Furthermore, farm children often accompany their parents to work in the fields, raising their pesticide exposures even higher. Many of the children with the greatest pesticide exposures are from migrant farmworker families, who are poor and usually people of color or recent immigrants. Pesticides can have an array of adverse health impacts on adults and children, ranging from acute poisonings to cancer, brain damage, and reproductive harm. Recent studies have linked pesticides with childhood leukemia, kidney tumors, brain tumors, and learning and memory problems.
Children face particular risks from pesticides for two main reasons.
And children's developing bodies and brains are more susceptible to toxins than adults. NRDC recommends a number of actions at the national, state and community level to reduce farm children's exposure to pesticides, including stepping up standards of protection for farmworkers and their children, phasing out the use of those pesticides that pose the greatest risk to pregnant women and children, providing affordable and accessible day care for farmworkers so their children won't have to accompany them to the fields, and improving research into pesticide-related illnesses. The Executive Summary of the report as well as related materials are also available in Spanish .