Pesticide knowledge among indigenous farmworkers

A significant portion of farmworkers in the US speak indigenous languages as their primary language. In Oregon, as much as 40% of the total farmworker population in labor intensive crops is composed of indigenous people, but pesticide safety training (when provided), is in Spanish and/or English, which many indigenous people do not completely understand. This insufficient training puts them at higher risk for pesticide exposure and its associated health effects. As part of a community-based participatory research project we recruited 62 nursery workers who self-reported as indigenous and randomly assigned them to a training intervention. Pesticide safety training was provided by community promotoras who spoke indigenous languages to the intervention group (n = 30) and their knowledge scores were compared to the scores of 32 indigenous workers who did not receive the specialized training. The intervention group also received follow-up by the promotoras to answer any questions they might have. Post-training scores were obtained after the baseline testing. At baseline, knowledge scores of both the control and the intervention groups did not differ significantly. Only 37.5% of the control group and 56.7% of the intervention group reported prior pesticide training. After the pesticide training, using a pairwise comparison, the intervention group showed a significant difference from baseline to post (p=0.050) while the control group did not (0.391). Over 50% of the intervention group improved their knowledge scores as a result of the training by the promotoras. These initial results indicate the benefit of receiving pesticide training in one's primary language.