El Comité para el Bienestar de Earlimart, Earlimart

“People do not want to make trouble, but when you feel so bad that you’re vomiting and your eyes are burning, you are going to say something.”

Teresa de Anda has grown up and raised her family in the small, agricultural town of Earlimart in the San Joaquin Valley. Living across the street from vineyards, she is well acquainted with the effects of pesticide drift. Her family and her neighbors have often suffered the burning eyes, nausea, headaches, difficulty breathing, and other symptoms that come from breathing in toxic pesticides. She recalls one day in May of 1999 when her whole house filled with the green residue and fog of pesticides. She wanted to evacuate her family, but outside the chemical fog was even worse. She called the fire station, the local sheriff, poison control, and the county agricultural commissioner but was told there was nothing they could do.

A few months later there was an even bigger pesticide accident in Earlimart from a nearby potato field. Her family was evacuated, but others were brought to the local school, where men, women, and children were forced to strip completely and hosed down with fire hoses. Teresa was angry about how the people were treated, and became determined to do something about it. “People do not want to make trouble,” she explains, “but when you feel so bad that you’re vomiting and your eyes are burning, you are going to say something.” She began going to meetings organized by the United Farm Workers and others to discuss and learn about the issue.

In May 2001 she helped form El Comité para el Bienestar de Earlimart, an organization of local residents dedicated to protecting the health of their families and neighbors from the harmful effects of pesticide exposure. For their first event, they successfully brought together over a hundred people to tell their pesticide stories to local, state, and federal governmental officials. The organization has continued organizing and raising awareness about the issue and is working with local and state officials to implement policy reforms. “There’s a long way to go,” Teresa explains, but there have been victories. For example, after years of pesticide accidents and lobbying by victims and advocates, the California legislature finally passed the Pesticide Drift Exposure Prevention and Response Act in 2004, a direct result of Teresa’s advocacy.

Last year, Teresa was hired by the Californians for Pesticide Reform as their Central Valley Representative, and she now works part time to limit the harmful effects of pesticides on the Valley’s residents, using office space at CRPE’s Delano office. She also serves on the advisory board of CRPE.

The work is hard, but Teresa is kept motivated by the knowledge that her children’s and grandchildren’s health is at stake. “It’s horrible being a mother and you can’t even protect your kids,” she explains. “It feels good to be trying to do something about it.”