Changes to EPA’s Farm Worker Protection Standard

The Environmental Protection Agency has revised the 1992 Agricultural Worker Protection Standard regulation to increase protection from pesticide exposure for the nation’s two million agricultural workers and their families. These changes will afford farmworkers similar health protections that are already afforded to workers in other industries while taking into account the unique working environment of many agricultural jobs.

The regulation seeks to protect and reduce the risks of injury or illness resulting from agricultural workers’ (those who perform hand-labor tasks in pesticide-treated crops, such as harvesting, thinning, pruning) and pesticide handlers’ (those who mix, load and apply pesticides) use and contact with pesticides on farms, forests, nurseries and greenhouses. The regulation does not cover persons working with livestock.

Click here for a list of major changes to the regulation from the EPA. 

Click here for a comparison chart of the new protections to the existing ones.

Additional information on the rule is available at: www2.epa.gov/pesticide-worker-safety/revisions-worker-protection-standard