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The Hispanic Paradox is greater than we think. The Rural Paradox now needs to be studied.
As much as 30 percent of Northern California’s garlic harvesters are under-aged children. Kids as young as six years old have voted in state-conducted union elections since they qualified as workers.
Some 800,000 under-aged children work with their families harvesting crops across America. Babies born to migrant workers suffer 25 percent higher infant mortality than the rest of the population.
Malnutrition among migrant worker children is 10 times higher than the national rate.
Farm workers’ average life expectancy is still 49 years –compared to 73 years for the average American
http://www.ufw.org/_page.php?menu=research&inc=history/12.html
My bold Despite these numbers Hispanics still live longer than Whites or African Americans even though we tend to be poorer and have less access to healthcare.
Now here is the Real Shocker
the mortality rates of first-generation immigrants are consistently better than that of U.S.-born Hispanics. But he said the difference between these groups is seldom statistically significant.
In 2007, the Public Policy Institute of California found that the average lifespan of a Hispanic man in that state is 77.5 years, compared to 75.5 among white males and 68.6 among black males. The lifespan of Hispanic men was topped only by Asian men, whose average lifespan came in at 80.4.
In 2008, the National Center for Health Statistics released a study showing that the overall mortality rate for Hispanics in 2006 was 550 deaths per 100,000 people, compared to 778 for whites, and 1,001 for blacks.
My bold so first generation Hispanics live longer than second and third etc generation Hispanics despite farm workers many of whom are first generation immigrants dying at 49 years of age!
Sean Hannity loves to brag that America has the best healthcare in the world but just how good can that healthcare be if the people with the least access to that healthcare live longer than you do?
Also one must wonder about the chemicals we use on farms.
While mortality rates in the United States overall have declined over the past few decades, mortality rates in metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas have diverged since the early 1990s. Figure 6 shows that, since 1990, non-metropolitan mortality has declined at an average annual rate of only 0.73 percent, significantly slower than the metropolitan rate of 1.27 percent.
My Bold Sarah Palin’s Real America should check their ground water for farm chemicals its not just Immigrant Farm Workers dying even people with Healthcare die.
Are Farms now more polluted than cities? Higher death rates for Hispanic farm Workers at ground zero for chemical exposure and to a lesser rate the higher death rate for non Hispanic Rural Americans than Urban People would seem to support that conclusion.
I am open to other explanations but I can’t think of any. The Hispanic Paradox suggests we would live much longer if our Farm Workers were removed from our average.
The until now unknown Rural Paradox is that we assume Rural People who have access to fresh farm food eat less Processed Food/Fast Food. We know that as a percentage they work more physical labor jobs as opposed to urban desk jobs thus getting more exercise which is healthy, we assume the air is fresher but Red States which tend to have more rural areas also tend to have very lax pollution control laws and under the 8 years of Bush I do not trust those pollution numbers.
What farm chemicals or other changes that started in the early 1990′s could explain Rural America’s higher Death rates compared to Urban People? For Hispanic Farm workers chemical exposure especially for child Farm Workers and Malnutrition seem to explain the much higher death rate.
For Rural America more study is needed. Lets hope that today’s politicians Dem and GOP will start talking about this issue when they go to Rural areas looking for votes.
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Have we no shame in this country, no sense of decency? I mean child labor? Who does that? Running hog wild on our environment? C’mom…
I am going to assume for the sake of the argument that Sean Hannidy is not speaking to the access to our health care. What good is the best technology if no one can access it? We have something like 51.9 people without access (probably more), our medication errors apparently kill more people that all of the drug war drugs combined, hospital infection rates are still a problem, our infant mortality rate is high, our veterans have head injuries that are ignored, and the healthy uninsured hope to God they don’t get sick, and, and, if you are like me and you need access to mental health care, you have to work with your doctor and negotiate for every-other-month visits and run around finding the right pharmacy because we are apparently forbidden from getting cheaper medication from Canada…I could go on and on.
To Sean Hannidy: You cannot separate health care from health care access and delivery. You bozo.
Our farmworkers clinics are woefully underfunded and understaffed too.
The neurotoxic chemicals for the insects also have terrible effects on the people that would be evident immediately in an acute exposure (poisoning) event or chronic exposure (over time). Yeah, mortality rates would shoot up in one generation. Remember the image of crop-dust airplanes in the movies? Those are spraying neurotoxins and they do it when people are working the fields.
For example:
“Event A. On July 23, 2007, IDPH received media reports that migrant workers in a field had been inadvertently exposed to pyraclostrobin fungicide by a crop-duster plane on July 22. An IDPH investigation identified 27 cases of acute illness among the potentially exposed workers; all illnesses were associated with off-target drift of the pyraclostrobin to an adjacent field, owned by a different grower, where workers were detasseling field corn. IDPH learned that the pilot had seen the nearby workers yet proceeded to apply the fungicide. Some workers reported feeling wet droplets on their skin and seeing mist coming from the aircraft.
All 27 persons with acute illness were Hispanic and residents of Texas. Twenty were male, and seven were female; median age was 46 years (range: 15–74 years). All received skin decontamination on-site by a hazardous materials team before being transported to an emergency department for observation until their symptoms resolved. All cases were categorized as being of low severity.* The most common symptom was upper respiratory tract pain or irritation (26 patients), followed by chest pain (20 patients). Three patients had nausea, and one patient each had pruritis, skin redness, eye pain, weakness, headache, dizziness, and chest pain.” (excerpt “Acute Pesticide Poisoning Associated with Pyraclostrobin Fungicide — Iowa, 2007,” CDC, January 4, 2008 / 56(51);1343-1345, link: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5651a3.htm )
‘Many paid their own transportation to and from Indiana, and work conditions in the fields were poor, according to case records. The workers had “dirty and inaccessible port-o-potties and warm and inaccessible drinking water,” as stated in the lawsuit. Some workers were exposed to pesticides when a crop duster sprayed a field while they detasseled corn, the lawsuit says.’ (excerpt from “Migrant workers file suit against Pioneer Hi-Bred,” By Jazmine Ulloa, The Brownsville Herald, July 22, 2010, link: http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/articles/migrant-114598-pioneer-bred.html )
Note that the operation described in the second instance has features of a slave operation. There is an estimate that there are 10,000 slaves here in the “Land of the Free, Home of the Brave” (see the video “Slavery exists in the United States… maybe in your own backyard.” at http://www.freetheslaves.net/Page.aspx?pid=356 ; all videos at http://www.freetheslaves.net/Page.aspx?pid=316 ).
There is some awareness of this problem and some have the political will to do something about it. “Business owner, Stephen Trinkaus, is on a mission – end slavery by utilizing his organic food store, Terra Organica, and to make his hometown, Bellingham, WA a slave-free city.” (“Give To Free – One Man’s Mission,” video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQAx9Ed9FLI )
“Something In The Rain” (video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuaR03lgOQI ; lyrics: http://www.mundotish.com/livelyr.html ) by San Antonio native and Mexican-American singer/songwriter, Tish Hinojosa (biography: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tish_Hinojosa ; website: http://www.mundotish.com )
Infant mortality in rural America and access to mental health much less drug rehab is horrible under the Capitalist system hospitals all want to locate in rich suburbs, or rich urban areas, poor urbane areas are next but rural areas have less people and are poor so they get the shaft.
Should Government force the free market hospitals to spread out and cover more people?
I think so.
Great Links MzChief I bring up Rural America’s problems after I mention Immigrant Farm workers to show Sarah Palin’s Real America that if you don’t care for others even the ones you work alongside or just see in town then in the end you don’t care for yourself.
Higher Death and Higher Infant Mortality rates for non Hispanics in Rural America higher than the evil/s Cities suggest that Rural America’s ignoring the exploitation of Farm Workers has consequences.
All those chemicals you pointed out that kill farm workers are now in the water and are killing them too.
By the time the chemicals get to the suburbs and cities they have been diluted Farm Workers die first, then Rural Americans then people downstream or nearby.
Its like a classic rat poison test those rats closest to the poison die or suffer the most and as you get further away from the poison the effect gets less but if the poison is still being pumped out then its only a matter of time before lower concentrations kill.
Thankfully most people wash their veggies and many farms wash the dirt and chemicals off before sale.
I was talking about my Diaries about the Hispanic Paradox with my Sister when she pointed out that Farm Workers many of whom are first generation have horrible lifespan numbers so I did some research and…well she was right.
Hat Tip to the Sister:)
Going organic to the standards of the Oregon Tilth versus the fake “organic” standards corporations like Whole Food$ got passed via their lobbyists is better for human health as we are also part of the chain of life and there is an accumulated environmental toxic risk to us that we don’t know how to do anything about other than hope we live through it. As we keep dumping the poison we intend for the insects and the animals into the environment, we raise the levels of poisons for ourselves. Yes, birth defects (look at cases in Appalachia as, say, West Virginia and think about how mountain top removal might increase the environmental toxic load), neurological disorders and the equal opportunity killer, cancer, are all over the rural US for at least the last +30 years due to the level of poisoning of the water, soil and air. Yes, the field workers die first, then the rural folks followed by the city folks (who may be dying of violence sooner than the toxins depending upon the area as, for instance, WV-downstream District of Columbia and New Orleans suffer from both [and, yes, poor health and violence are related]). The chemicals have a half-life that has to be reached before they degrade enough to be less or not toxic to the living. Essentially, our environmental dumping rates overcome that process. Some components never degrade enough to be safe as, say, the dumping of nuclear waste which I classify as a very long term chronic poisoning event. I could go on ad nauseam but will stop here. I and others have posted links to US and European research data, medical findings and government reports at FDL previously about this so one can do a keyword search to find them.
recommended.