Human
Rights Watch report said interviewed children began work around age 13
planting, weeding and harvesting nicotine plants
US tobacco
fields employ hundreds of children, some as young as 13, according to a Human Rights Watch report released on Wednesday that says the children are being
exposed to health dangers posed by nicotine.
Nearly
three quarters of the children interviewed for the report said they had
experienced the sudden onset of symptoms of acute nicotine poisoning, also
known as Green Tobacco Sickness: vomiting, loss of appetite, dizziness, rashes
and other irritations.
“As the
school year ends, children are heading into the tobacco fields, where they
can’t avoid being exposed to dangerous nicotine, without smoking a single
cigarette,” said Margaret Wurth, children’s rights researcher at Human Rights
Watch (HRW) and co-author of the report. “It’s no surprise the children exposed
to poisons in the tobacco fields are getting sick.”
From May to
October 2013, HRW conducted interviews with 141 child tobacco workers between
the ages of seven and 17 in the four states where 90% of tobacco is cultivated
in the US: North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia.
“I would
barely eat anything because I wouldn’t get hungry,” a 13-year-old named Elena
told Human Rights Watch in May 2013. “Sometimes I felt like I needed to throw
up. I felt like I was going to faint. I would stop and just hold myself up with
the tobacco plant.”
The child
workers perform tasks like planting, weeding and harvesting, which put them in
direct contact with the leaves. Nicotine can then be absorbed through the skin
– just as it is with nicotine patches – exposing kids to high levels of
nicotine.
Workers can
absorb up to 54 milligrams of dissolved nicotine in one day of work, the
equivalent of 50 cigarettes, according to a 2005 study by Dr Robert McKnight,
of the College of Public Health at the University of Kentucky, Lexington.
“These kids
are getting exposed to nicotine just as if they were smoking or chewing
tobacco, and that’s changing their brains, which has got to be a bad thing,”
said Dr Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine at University of California San
Francisco, and director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research. Glantz was
not involved with the report.
Human
Rights Watch said the children they interviewed usually began work at age 13,
with their parents and older siblings, usually not on family-owned farms. The
children were mostly Hispanic immigrants, though usually US citizens.
The rules
for children working in agriculture are different from those working in other
industries, which means that with parental permission, a child as young as 12
can work for unlimited hours outside of school on a tobacco farm. Children
under 12 can work on small farms owned by family members. In other industries,
only children 14 and older can work, and there are limits placed on those aged
14 and 15.
Human
Rights Watch said that no child under age 18 should be working a job where they
come into contact with tobacco, and urged the US government and tobacco
manufacturing companies to keep children out of tobacco farms.
The US
Department of Labor withdrew proposed regulations that would have updated the prohibited
list of occupations for children under 16, including tobacco. There are also no
state labor laws offering additional protections to child agriculture workers
in each of the four states surveyed.
"The
tobacco industry and tobacco farm lobby remain influential in the US, even
today,” said Clifford Douglas, the director of the University of Michigan's
Tobacco Research Network and a professor at the university's school of public
health. “Not like it once was, but any legislation that threatens their bottom
line, without regard to public health concerns, faces a tough road.”
Human
Rights Watch contacted10 tobacco manufacturers to ask for information about
child labor laws they have in place on farms where their tobacco is sourced.
HRW said Philip Morris International has the most comprehensive and protective
policies, which are being implemented in its global supply chain. None of the
companies, however, have global policies that prohibit all work by children
under 18 at tobacco farms.
Altria
Group, the company that holds Philip Morris USA, said it had
"engaged" with Human Rights Watch to understand the concerns raised
in their research, and said it would work with the Farm Labor Practices Group,
which it helped found, to ensure it complies with labor regulations.
"Altria’s
tobacco companies do not condone the unlawful employment or exploitation of
farm workers, especially those under the age of 18, and actively work to
address workplace issues associated with farm labor," said a company
spokesperson in an email.
Its code of
conduct states that domestic tobacco growers may not assign anyone under 18 to
work in hazardous agricultural occupations.
"As
consumers in the US and other affluent countries smoke less, they need to get
more smokers in developing countries, and in order for them to keep the price
of cigarettes relatively low, they have to keep the price of labor low,” said
Marty Otañez, an anthropology professor at the University of Colorado at
Denver, and a board member at the Human Rights and Tobacco Control Network. “So
I think they would probably refrain from stopping buying tobacco from farms
that produce with child labor, because in one sense, if they did that, they
would have little to no farms to buy from."
Otañez said
the problem is not simply eliminating child labor, but creating a more fair
working environment so adults are not reliant on children’s wages.
"The
report gives us a view from the soil of solutions from the individuals who are
affected by all these problems,” Otañez said. “So if you look at a child
laborer, who is 14 years old and produces leaves in North Carolina: what that
individual wants – and what the report demonstrates – is that they want
fairness and dignity in their life. I think those are two things that the
industry, whether it's Phillip Morris, or the leaf buyers, they're just not set
up to do because of their interest to maintain shareholder value."
 |
No comments:
Post a Comment