Word: california
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...bountiful harvest of California strawberries, melons, grapes, peaches and nectarines overflows the nation's summer tables. But that luscious crop mostly emerges thanks to farm workers who labor in flat fields under a scorching sun - and has a price higher than the grocery-store bill. Every year many farm workers become sick, and some die. Typical of the fatalities was Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, who was just 17. In May 2008, she died after picking grapes in Merced County for nine hours in 95-degree heat. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger attended her funeral and promised to do more to protect workers...
...lawsuit is now underway to ensure just that. Last week, the ACLU and the blue-chip law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson sued California's occupational-health and safety agency on behalf of the United Farm Workers (UFW) and five farm workers who had become sick or are relatives of workers who have died from heatstroke. According to the lawsuit "large numbers of agricultural employers fail utterly to provide basic access to water and shade for their employees" and, as a result, hundreds suffer heat-related illnesses and hospitalizations - or worse - each year . (Read a story about how a pro-football...
...California implemented the nation's first heat-illness standard, requiring farms and contractors to provide water and shade to the state's 650,000 farm workers who help supply 44% of the nation's fruits and vegetables. The lawsuit claims the enforcement agency, the State's Division of Occupational Health and Safety (Cal-OSHA) is woefully understaffed (only 198 inspectors for 17 million state workers including the 650,000 farm workers) and that since California enacted its Heat Illness Prevention regulation, "the number of farm-worker heat-related deaths has increased." Catherine Lhamon, assistant legal director for the ACLU...
...recently signed state budget authorized $1.5 million to expand outreach efforts to educate workers and employers about heat illness in all outdoor industries. Unlike many state agencies, Cal-OSHA did not see its budget cut. (Read a story about California's severe budget cuts...
...Science, vulnerability to extinction runs in families, meaning that some groups of species have a higher likelihood of becoming extinct than others. "It turns out that some branches of the tree of life are more extinction-prone than others," says Kaustuv Roy, a biology professor at the University of California, San Diego. "Those traits aren't just a part of extinctions that human beings cause, but a general feature of extinction itself." (See the world's endangered species...