empowering farmworkers to improve their living and working conditions since 1981

Reforming Pesticide Policy through Litigation and Advocacy

Newsletters - Spring 2009 Newsletter

Shelley Davis was nationally known for her leadership in advocating for pesticide protections for agricultural workers. She successfully helped push for comprehensive safety standards to protect workers, and was also a key litigator in several winning challenges to improve working conditions in the fields.

In several lawsuits against the U.S. government, she challenged the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) decisions about the legal use of pesticides that harm farmworkers and their families.

In 1990, as co-counsel for intervening parties in Northwest Food Processors v. Reilly, she played a significant role in persuading the court to reject an industry demand to overturn the government's decision to ban the toxic pesticide dinoseb. More recently, Farmworker Justice and a broad coalition of farmworker, public health and environmental groups filed five lawsuits against the EPA challenging its authorization to allow continued use of a number of highly toxic pesticides. The goal of the lawsuits is to protect children, farmworkers, and wildlife from the most dangerous pesticides and to reform the EPA's lackadaisical regulation of public and private health.

In 2006, the EPA proposed a human-testing regulation which would allow chemical companies to conduct pesticide toxicity studies by intentionally dosing human subjects. Shelley joined forces with farmworker, environmental, and health organizations to sue the EPA for adopting these unethical and unlawful regulations. The groups contend that the agency's rule violates a law passed by Congress in 2005 mandating strict ethical and scientific protections for pesticide testing on humans.

Shelley's tireless advocacy led to strengthened worker safety protections for farmworkers and their families. She always sought to include the voices of farmworkers themselves, either through their direct testimony or by recounting their stories. She also valued the importance of helping farmworkers to become better advocates on their own behalf, and developed workshops and training curricula to teach basic grassroots advocacy skills.

Shelley directed much of her advocacy on two important issues: improving the EPA Worker Protection Standard, and increasing the time and money spent on researching and monitoring the effects of pesticides on farmworker health.

In June 2007, Farmworker Justice sponsored a Congressional briefing to highlight the problems and solutions to farmworker pesticide poisoning and to push for greater funding for pesticide research. Shelley spoke at the briefing and invited an Idaho farmworker poisoned by pesticides to share his experience.

The 2008 Farm Bill includes a new pesticide safety research program that Shelley designed to study the relationship between pesticide exposure and cancer, with the goal of acquiring the data needed for better policies and health prevention programs for farmworkers. The new Farm Bill program also includes research to develop medical testing for farmworkers exposed to pesticides and new technology for testing pesticide residues in the fields to determine safe re-entry times. Now Congress must appropriate the funds for this research.

Shelley worked with other farmworker advocates, medical experts and community organizations to advocate for greater use of medical monitoring of farmworkers to help reduce pesticide poisoning. She was instrumental in helping Washington State farmworker advocates push for a cutting edge program that monitors enzyme levels of farmworkers who regularly handle organophosphate or carbamate pesticides in that state. Shelley co-wrote two reports that analyzed the findings of the Washington State program and called on the EPA to increase safeguards for farmworkers and to implement a national medical monitoring program.

Shelley's lasting legacy can be seen not only in the laws and regulations she helped to reform, but also in the countless individuals that she inspired to work for a better world for farmworkers. She influenced many fellow attorneys, students and farmworkers themselves. Mily Treviño-Sauceda, Executive Director of the farmworker women's organization Lideres Campesinas had this to say about Shelley's impact:

"Her words of encouragement, support, and guidance, personally gave me strength, hope and focus. She was a good mentor in many ways. This and many, many other things Shelley did for me and Lideres Campesinas. She gave us visibility. She will always be in our hearts and our memories. I know her spirit will always be around caring for all of us."