One thing to know about me is that I am the least politically aware person on the planet, which drives certain people around me crazy. This is why I rarely read things such as the Op/Ed page in my local paper. Once in a while, though, something will catch my eye as it did a couple of weeks ago. The headline read: "America's farm workers still toil in fields of danger." Well, that intrigued me since that is - pardon the pun - my field of work. I wondered what danger they were in and why I hadn't heard about this at work.
So I read the article. And I found myself both irritated and affronted.
The story was written by a former EPA agent and rather than address what he called "conditions of horror" it read like the petulant diary of an angst-ridden 13-year-old. He goes back to 1979 and time travels to the mid-‘80s with only tales of "I told them so and they did nothing." He cites expert reports and EPA bans regarding neurotoxins but he never actually gets to a point in his opinion that would lead me to think he was offering a solution or calling for the public to rally and help the migrant workers.
Nor did he mention the extreme measures already taken by members of the industry to combat the problem over the years or the lack of incidents. So, I put the paper down wondering just what the point to the whole thing was. Scare tactics? Venting? Self-glorification? I only know that it left me remembering why I don't read that section of the paper.
--Jennifer
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