This five-year project is part of the Center for Child Environmental Health housed at the University of Washington. The Center for Child Environmental Health Risks Research (CHC) was formed to learn more about children's susceptibility to pesticides and the way pesticides affect normal development and learning. The overall goal of this study is to reduce pesticide exposure in children of farm workers in the Yakima Valley of Washington state, by breaking the pesticide "take-home" pathway. Twenty-four communities and labor camps have been randomized to an intervention or comparison condition. Intervention activities are targeted to all community sectors and include information dissemination at health fairs, an annual school calendar contest, home health parties, distribution of "Keep me Pesticide-free" bibs to newborns, soap kits for washing clothes separately, and many more. The primary outcome is differences in pesticide metabolites in the urine of a random sample of children of farmworkers.
