Bad Lungs/Bad Air: Childhood Asthma and Ecosyndemics among Mexican Immigrant Farmworkers of California's San Joaquin Valley

Abstract

California's San Joaquin Valley, one of the most highly productive—and contaminated—agricultural regions in the world, is beset by some of the nation's worst air quality and high rates of childhood asthma. Children of Mexican-origin farmworkers in the San Joaquin Valley have exceptionally high rates of asthma compared with children of Mexican descent in both the United States and Mexico. We suggest that public health paradigms, which posit that Mexican-American children are at relatively low risk of developing childhood asthma, do not apply to the population of children of Mexican immigrant farmworkers in the San Joaquin Valley. Combining ethnographic and photovoice methods, we demonstrate how industrial farming conditions systematically expose children of farmworkers to environmental insults over which they have little or no control, including pesticide exposure, bovine contamination, agricultural field burning, and substandard housing, all of which contribute to high prevalence of asthma among children. We argue that the application of structural vulnerability, structural violence, and ecosyndemic frameworks can be used to better explicate complex environmental injustices that might otherwise be overlooked by more reductionistic theories.