This report is a critical element of NRDC s Children s Environmental Health Project. Since 1989, NRDC has been working to identify the environmental hazards to children s health, and to minimize or eliminate the most severe threats. We aim to reshape public health guidelines to make children s health the standard for public policy and to incorporate multiple exposures and interactive effects into basic health policy assumptions. Through demonstrations of conventional risk assessment s failure to protect children, we hope to shift policymakers opinions and actions toward more precautionary approaches. Trouble on the Farm reviews the scientific evidence demonstrating that farm children are exposed to pesticides via numerous routes, and in disproportionate quantities.
Precautionary action is required to protect farm children.
Chapters 1 and 2 of the report focus on the health impacts of pesticides and scientific evidence of children s particular exposures and susceptibility. Chapter 5 demonstrates how farm children are surrounded by pesticides and reviews evidence of exposure through water, food, outdoor air, indoor air, and dust. Chapter 6 illustrates how total exposures to pesticides from all sources can result in pesticide residues in children s urine or blood. The evidence to date indicates that farm children are exposed to numerous hazardous pesticides, from multiple sources, and at levels higher than those routinely encountered by the general population. This science should not be ignored, but rather must be used to inform prudent public policy.