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Pesticide safety programs in Texas have primarily concentrated on protecting farm worker's health.
Following litigation brought by the Texas United Farm Workers, the Texas Legislature enacted Farmworker Right-to-Know legislation, requiring agricultural producers to ensure that farmworkers receive training and adequate health and safety information on the pesticides to which they might be exposed. The Farmworker Right-to-Know law requires the Texas Department of Agriculture to distribute crop sheets to agricultural workers in English and Spanish. The crop sheets include information on the most common pesticides used on particular crops in particular regions of the state. They contain safety warnings and handling instructions, including the length of time for which sprayed fields should be posted.
Under Texas Department of Agriculture rules, agricultural producers are also required, if asked, to notify
anyone whose property adjoins a field or who resides or works in a building, school, hospital, or day-care center within one-quarter mile of a field that is to be sprayed. Anyone who is
chemically sensitive and resides within one-quarter mile of a field that is to be sprayed also may ask for notification.
Despite concern over farmworker exposure to pesticides, however, Texas has no systematic health monitoring of
the two million farmworkers who work around pesticides. Industrial workers producing these same pesticides do receive health monitoring. The Office of Technology Assessment estimates that
300,000 farmworkers are poisoned by pesticides each year.*
The state also lacks broad notification or posting requirements for treatments of lawns, golf courses, or other
nonagricultural settings. State law does, however, provide that notice signs must be posted in common areas of apartments, workplaces, hospitals, day care centers, schools or educational
institutions, warehouses, hotels, and food-processing locations 48 hours prior to indoor pesticide applications.* It also requires posting for outdoor pesticide use at apartment complexes.*
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