Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS
410 MRAK HALL
DAVIS,CA 95616-8671
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
This project supports the mission of the Agricultural Experiment Station by addressing the Hatch Act areas of sustainable agriculture.Farmworkers are vulnerable to ambient environmental conditions. An emerging health hazard is smoke from wildfires and agricultural burning (Sullivan et al., 2022). Smoke poses an immediate threat to the health and wellbeing of farmworkers through increased risk of cardiovascular and respiratory disorders (Reid et al., 2016; Black et al., 2017; Liu et al., 2017; Wettstein et al., 2018; DeFlorio-Barker et al., 2019; Heft-Neal et al., 2023). Smoke may also influence farmers' and farmworkers' decisions about when, where, and how much to work, which risks exacerbating ongoing labor shortages in the agricultural sector. We will conduct a project that will quantify the effect of smoke from 1) wildfires and 2) agricultural burning on farmworker labor and health outcomes. Wildfires are a salient risk and pressing public policy concern. Over the past few decades, the United States has witnessed a more than twofold increase in the area burned by wildfires annually (Abatzoglou and Williams, 2016). Farmworkers are particularly vulnerable to wildfire smoke exposure: they mostly work outdoors and are engaged in vigorous physical activity. In addition, the wildfire season often overlaps with the peak harvest season in the western United States.Agricultural burning is another important source of smoke exposure for farmworkers. Open burning of agricultural fields is a widespread practice for clearing post-harvest crop residue. In the United States alone, agricultural burning covers approximately 3 to 5.8 million acres each year (Pouliot et al., 2017). This practice directly affects approximately 15.5 million people across the United States, exposing them to the smoke from agricultural burning (McCarty, 2011). Among the most affected are farmworkers laboring near these fields who are particularly vulnerable to health hazards.This research directly aligns with the topic area of sustainable agriculture under the Hatch Act. By prioritizing the health and safety of farmworkers, who are essential contributors to agricultural sustainability, we can ensure the long-term resilience of our agricultural systems. By mitigating the health risks associated with wildfire exposure and agricultural burning, we can promote a more sustainable and equitable agricultural sector for both workers and the broader community.
Animal Health Component
(N/A)
Research Effort Categories
Basic
100%
Applied
(N/A)
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
This project tackles three related objectives. First, we will investigate whether agricultural labor outcomes respond to wildfire smoke at both the extensive margin (are workers observed on a given day?) and the intensive margin (how many hours are workers observed on a given day?) using individual-level cellphone-location data. With the ability to follow individuals at fine spatial and temporal scales, we will also be able to consider labor adjustment to wildfires including spatial (do workers substitute hours worked across space?) and temporal (do workers substitute hours worked across time?). The second objective is to conduct the first quasi-experimental investigation of the effects of smoke from wildfires on agricultural workers' injuries. We will estimate the daily linear and nonlinear impacts of smoke from a wildfire on agricultural worker injury. We will also investigate whether recent regulation to protect outdoor workers from wildfire smoke was effective in reducing worker injury rates. In addition, we will further determine which gender is more vulnerable to smoke. Lastly, we will calculate the economic cost of the adverse health effects from wildfire smoke exposure on agricultural workers. The third objective of this project is to investigate the impacts of agricultural burning on air pollution and its health implications for agricultural workers. We will evaluate the effectiveness of agricultural burning bans in reducing air pollution levels and related injuries. We propose using satellite data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Hazard Mapping System (HMS) fire and smoke product, and PM2.5 data from Childs et al.(2022) to track the geographic location of agricultural fires, smoke, and PM2.5, minimizing measurement error from earlier modeling based approaches (Pullabhotla et al., 2023).
Project Methods
For the first and the second project, to identify the causal impact of smoke exposure, we use plausibly exogenous variation in wildfire smoke, as measured by smoke plumes. The key empirical challenge for studies that measure the causal effect of air pollution on labor market outcomes is isolating pollution variation that is not a function of factors that directly drive economic activity (Borgschulte et al., 2022). By using daily variation in wildfire smoke, we sidestep issues related to the joint determination of economic activity and air quality. Wind disperses wildfire smoke over thousands of miles, yielding plausibly exogenous variation in smoke that is unconnected to factors that affect underlying economic conditions. For the third project, we will assess the impact of exposure to smoke from agricultural burning on health outcomes by employing changes in wind direction as a source of plausibly exogenous variation.