![[logo] US EPA](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/eot2008/20090508062359im_/http://www.epa.gov/epafiles/images/logo_epaseal.gif){kind=logo}
For Healthy Kids!
¡Para Niños Saludables!
Site Navigation
 |
Research Project Search
WHAT IS "FOR HEALTHY KIDS!"? For Healthy Kids! is a project about the health of children and adults in the Lower Yakima Valley. It was designed to find out what people think about pesticides and show them how to protect themselves and their children from exposure to pesticides. The University of Washington was funded to create a Center for Child Environmental Health Risks Research. This five-year project is examining children's susceptibility to pesticides based on laboratory and field research. For Healthy Kids! conducts activities to reduce take-home pesticide exposure in children of agricultural workers in the Lower Yakima Valley. The overall goal of For Healthy Kids! is to determine if activities to reduce pesticides carried home on the skin, clothes, shoes, and hats of agricultural workers can reduce the pesticide metabolites in their children's bodies and residues in the house.
WHY BRING THIS STUDY TO THE VALLEY? The Yakima Valley is an agriculturally rich area of Washington State. Agricultural workers are routinely exposed to pesticides as part of their occupation, and are concerned about this exposure. The short-term effects of pesticide exposure are well known; this study will help to determine the level of exposure that agricultural workers and their children receive.
WHAT DOES THE PROJECT DO? Twenty-four communities and labor camps in the Lower Valley were identified for the project. Baseline surveys were conducted in these communities, and households with agricultural workers who had children under the age of 6 were identified and interviewed in depth. Urine samples were taken from both an agricultural worker and a young child in the household. A Community Advisory Board, made up of members of the Valley, oversees the project. Following the baseline assessment, communities were randomized to receive program activities or serve as "no treatment" controls.
Activities to break the take-home pathway are both community-wide and individual. Community-wide intervention activities may include the distribution of media messages (pamphlets, bulletin boards), participation in events in community organizations, participation in health fairs, and distribution of videos on how to protect one's children from pesticide exposure. Individual activities consist of outreach to families in agriculture. Lay health workers have been trained to talk to families about protecting their children from pesticide exposure. The workers will use teaching tools such as a fluorescent light to show how pesticide residues cling to clothing and demonstrate how clothing that is worn in the fields should be handled separately. Other activities will be done as decided by the Community Advisory Board.
After two years of intervention, a final survey and urine samples were taken from field workers and their children. The main outcome will be differences in pesticide-containing metabolites in children's urine at the final follow-up. We will also look at differences in adult urine and at responses to the interviews.
WHO IS FUNDING THIS PROJECT? The project is being funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Dr. Elaine Faustman is head of the Center for Child Environmental Health Risks Research at the University of Washington. Dr. Beti Thompson of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center is directing the study to break the take-home pathway of pesticide exposure in the Lower Yakima Valley.
Centers Funded By: 