Latino/a farmworkers’ concerns about safety and health in the Pennsylvania mushroom industry

Abstract

Objectives:

The purposes of this study were to analyze Latino/a immigrant mushroom workers’ perceptions of how the workplace environment shapes occupational safety and health, examine whether and how those perceptions differ by gender, and identify future areas for research on occupational safety and health in the mushroom industry.

Methods:

Researchers conducted structured interviews with fifteen women and forty-five men on six Pennsylvania mushroom farms to obtain their descriptions and perspectives of safety and health risk factors in their workplaces.

Results:

Approximately one-third of respondents had suffered an injury at work and nearly half felt there are workplace factors that affect their health and safety. The study found that Latino/a mushroom farmworkers perceive that risks are posed by the indoor infrastructure of mushroom production houses, including poorly maintained wooden walkways and cool indoor temperatures, and by the organization of mushroom production work, including the application of chemicals including pesticides, physical demands of the job, use of small knives, contact with compost, and the piece rate payment system. Workers commonly discussed back pain and believed it was associated with the organization of work. Women in the sample were more likely to be concerned about slips and falls than men and less likely to be concerned about aches and pains.

Conclusion:

Mushroom farm infrastructure and the specific demands of the jobs pose occupational safety and health risks to Latino/a farmworkers that merit further study in order to develop adequate public health interventions. Future research should obtain gender-disaggregated objective reports of injury, aches and pains, and discomfort and test for relationships between these reports and the indoor infrastructure and conditions of mushroom production work.

Introduction

Agricultural occupations are among the most dangerous jobs in the United States [1], and many of the nation’s hired farmworkers are Latino/a immigrants, primarily from Mexico and Central America [2]. Of the estimated 1.4 to 2.1 million waged agricultural workers in the U.S. [1], 83% are of Hispanic origin or Latino descent (hereafter, “Latino/a”), predominantly from Mexico [3]. Studies of occupational safety and health in a wide range of crop and livestock industries have shown that Latino/a farmworkers are exposed to significant risk of fatal and non-fatal accident and injury, as well as chronic pain, discomfort, and emotional stress on the job [4,5]. The exposure of Latino/a immigrants to occupational safety and health risks is associated with structural inequalities in society that render them vulnerable in the workplace. These social inequalities include language barriers, which reduce access to needed information to perform work safely [6]; a high rate of participation in farm work by unauthorized immigrants, which makes workers fearful to report workplace hazards or seek medical care [4]; low wages, which can incentivize working long hours to perform physically difficult or risky tasks [7]; a federal legal framework that severely limits the jurisdiction of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration on farms [8]; and the racialization of farmworkers of color, often relegating them to physically arduous farm jobs [9]. Although Latino/a immigrants facing these disadvantages provide an essential labor source to the U.S. mushroom industry, their experiences and perceptions of occupational safety and health risks in the mushroom industry have yet to be documented in the literature.

Approximately 32% of hired farm laborers in the U.S. are women [3]. Therefore, Latina women comprise a relatively small share of the farm labor force. The gender division of labor in crop production exposes women and men to different forms of safety and health risks [9]. A review of the available literature led by by Sara Quandt found that little research has been published on occupational injuries among Latina farmworkers, although women may experience more injuries and receive less safety training [10]. The gender division of labor in most agricultural production renders them vulnerable to heat-related illness and pesticide-related illness and injury [10–12]. A more sizeable body of research has focused on the alarming rates of sexual harassment and violence that Latina farmworkers face in the workplace as a result of their intersectional vulnerabilities [13–17]. Comparative studies of Latina and Latino farmworkers perceptions’ of general risks posed by the workplace environment are thus far lacking in the literature. Such studies are needed in order to develop a more robust intersectional framework for assessing both perceptions of risk and incidence of injury in agriculture.

The U.S. mushroom industry is profitable, reporting $1.13 billion in sales from 846 million pounds of Agaricus and specialty mushrooms in the 2018–2019 growing season [18]. The most commonly grown mushroom in the United States is the Agaricus mushroom, accounting for $1.06 billion in sales in the 2018–2019 growing season. The Agaricus mushroom species includes, among other varieties, the common button (known as “whites”) and crimini and portabella mushrooms (known as “browns”) [18,19]. About two-thirds (67%) of Agaricus mushroom production in the U.S. occurs in Pennsylvania [18]. Mushroom production in the United States is concentrated in Pennsylvania. In 2018, 53 Pennsylvania farms, some of which operate multiple production sites, produced approximately 572,223,000 pounds of mushrooms [18]. Most Pennsylvania mushrooms are produced in a cluster of farms near the towns of Kennett Square and Reading, in the southeastern region of the state [20]. California is the next largest producer in mushroom production, with 13 farms and 95,324 pounds of mushrooms produced in 2018 [10].

In Pennsylvania, most mushrooms are produced in a traditional mushroom growing house colloquially known as the “Pennsylvania double”, which is windowless and often built into the side of a hill to aid in temperature control [21]. These indoor facilities are normally two to three stories high and contain four to six rows of wooden mushroom beds on each level. Each row contains three mushroom beds – at ankle, mid-thigh, and shoulder height for an average sized male worker (higher for women). Mushroom beds are typically four to five feet wide. Mushrooms are produced through a complex supply chain. “Spawn” is created in laboratories, combined with “substrate” (i.e. compost) in mushroom beds, and then covered with a layer of peat moss for moisture that promotes growth [22,23]. Mushroom production facilities are carefully monitored and controlled for watering, CO2 levels, temperature, and airflow [22,23]. Production facilities are warmed to encourage mushroom growth and then the temperature is brought down to slow growth for harvest [22,23]. The ideal temperature at harvest time is 60–66 °F, when the mushroom houses are most frequented by Latino/a workers [22]. Most mushroom beds can go through seven to ten growing cycles per year. In total, a complete production cycle takes approximately fifteen weeks from composting to the end of the harvest [22]. Harvesting is performed over a two-to-four day period, during which time each mushroom bed will produce three (3) “breaks” of mature mushrooms. In Pennsylvania, mushrooms are harvested by hand using a sharp harvesting knife, similar in appearance to a paring knife [22,23].

Most of the manual labor required for mushroom production is at the harvesting stage. Most harvesters in Pennsylvania are Latino/a immigrants or their children. A majority of mushroom workers are of Mexican origin [24]. The Mexican population in the mushroom industry began supplanting Puerto Rican workers in the 1970s and grew fast after legal amnesty was offered to undocumented farmworkers in the US in 1986 [24]. Anthropological research conducted by Victor Garcia with transnational Mexican mushroom farmworkers in southeastern PA has highlighted the structural vulnerabilities faced by Mexican mushroom farmworkers. This work has revealed perceptions of unfair working conditions, leading to unionization efforts [25]. Further, Garcia has found prevalent substance abuse in mushroom farmworker communities, which stems from extended cross-border family separations, undocumented status, working long weeks, and other personal, cultural, and situational factors [26, 27]. To date, however, perceptions of occupational hazards have not been a primary focus of research with the mushroom farmworker population in Pennsylvania.

Mushroom harvesting entails repetitive bending, cutting, and jumping or straddling boards to reach the highest beds. Boards along the second and third stories, and the staircases that connect them, are most often wooden and narrow. Harvesters are paid according to the volume they pick, with mushrooms of different sizes and types obtaining different rates of pay. While women employed in the mushroom industry most often work in packing plant facilities, they are also increasingly employed as harvesters. Due to their shorter stature, they commonly experience these demands on their bodies differently from men. These descriptions of conditions of work are based on researcher observations and accounts given by interviewed workers.

Although there is an empirical gap in the literature on safety and health conditions in U.S. mushroom production, the harvesting labor process suggests musculoskeletal disorders (MSD), aches and pains, and respiratory issues may occur. Scholarship on MSD among U.S. farmworkers shows that lower back pain is associated with repetitive stooping, bending, lifting of heavy objects, and awkward positions held for long periods of time [5,28–30]; finger and hand pain is associated with repetitive motions and the use of manual tools [5,28]; and shoulder and neck pain is associated with carrying heavy objects and reaching motions common in orchard work [29]. Workers may also experience sprains and strains due to repetitive stooping and bending [5,29]. Female workers more commonly experience chronic back and knee pain from repetitive motions in agricultural occupations [30]. In the mushroom industry, workers are at risk for MSD because of repetitive motions like bending, reaching, and cutting. Moreover, since slippery surfaces increase a worker’s risk of falling and experiencing a traumatic injury [5,31], the often-wet boards and floors inside mushroom houses may present heightened risk for falls, slips, and trips, which can lead to back pain or other aches and pains.

Respiratory conditions related to mushroom cultivation are well documented. Mushroom Worker’s Lung, a type of hypersensitivity pneumonitis (HP), arises from the inhalation of mushroom spores or organic antigens found in compost used to fertilize mushrooms (mostly thermophilic actinomycetes) [32–34]. A seminal 1959 study on Puerto Rican farmworkers in Pennsylvania who handled mushroom compost was among the first to identify this disease in the US [35]. The researchers compared it to a similar disease called Farmer’s Lung, most often related to the inhalation of mold from hay [35]. Researchers listed cough, rales, chest pain, dyspnea, nausea, vomiting, headache, chills, among other symptoms [35]. More recent international studies have reported on Mushroom Worker’s Lung outbreaks resulting from inhalation of spores from the Hypsizygus marmoreus (Bunashimeji) and Pleurotus osteatus (Oyster) mushroom varieties in Japan [36,37]; the Agaricus bisporus varieties in Ireland, Australia, and the United States [38–40]; and from several Eastern [Asian] mushroom types such as Shiitake mushrooms worldwide [41]. Exposure to mushroom spores and antigens from compost in mushroom production can provoke chronic cough, runny nose, wheezing, sputum, fever elevation and/or shortness of breath among workers [36,41]. Extended absence from the farm improves respiratory symptoms and overall worker health [38,40].

There is no Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standard specific to the mushroom industry, although industry-wide measures exist to protect workers. OSHA uses a generalized list of standards, the General Duty Clause (29 USC 645.5(a)), for all agricultural industries. However, there is an exemption from inspection and oversight for any farm “with ten or fewer non-family employees that has not maintained a temporary labor camp within the preceding twelve months” [42]. This exemption is maintained even if a violation of OSHA rules has been reported or if someone dies on the farm from an occupational injury [43,44]. Since 2007 the Pennsylvania OSHA has upheld an Alliance Agreement with the American Mushroom Institute (AMI), an association of U.S. mushroom growers and producers, to share information on OSHA regulations, make occupational safety and health resources available to growers, and provide more effective training to farmworkers [45]. Thus far, the alliance has proved fruitful. In 2017, fifty-nine companies reported injury data, representing 8,489 employees industry-wide [45]. By comparison, only twenty-nine companies reported injury data in 2009 [45]. The OSHA-AMI Alliance Agreement report does not indicate how many companies were asked to report data. This increase in data availability provides OSHA with more robust and accurate representations of injuries in the industry. However, little is publicly known about the types of accident and injury that might be suffered on mushroom farms. The Bureau of Labor Statistics only reports one death in the entire U.S. mushroom industry in 2017, which was attributed to “falls, slips, trips” [46]. No data on nonfatal injuries in mushroom production are listed for 2018 [47]. The fact that immigrant agricultural workers are known to underreport non-fatal accidents and injuries suggests the real numbers may be higher [4,48–50].

Given the risks to occupational safety and health for Latino/a workers in the mushroom industry, it is likely that these workers hold concerns about workplace safety and health risks. The gender division of labor in production also suggest that their concerns may differ by gender. The lack of published literature attesting to these concerns presents an impediment to the development of public health interventions that could attend to workers’ needs. The aims of this paper are to analyze Latino/a immigrant mushroom workers’ perceptions of how the workplace environment shapes occupational safety and health, examine whether and how those perceptions differ by gender, and identify future areas for research on worker occupational safety and health in the mushroom industry.

Methods

Study Design

This data was collected as part of larger qualitative study with mushroom production farmworkers, packing plant workers, and employers that assessed the causes and consequences of a labor shortage experienced in the Pennsylvania mushroom industry. This paper is based on findings from a series of structured questions on health and safety that were included in the parent study’s interviews with sixty mushroom production workers on six different mushroom farms. Owners of participating farms were first contacted about the study by American Mushroom Institute staff or by extension professionals at the principal researcher’s university. Those individuals had identified those farms as potential participants based on their prior expression of concern over the labor shortage and their perceived willingness to participate in a social science research study on labor. At least three farms did not respond affirmatively to these initial communications about the study, and one farm contacted by the principal researcher directly rejected the invitation to participate. Six farms that demonstrated interest to participate were then contacted by the principal researcher to formally recruit their participation in the study. All study procedures were reviewed and approved by the Penn State University Institutional Review Board (IRB).

Participant Recruitment

Participants were recruited at farm workplaces. Between four and twenty farmworkers were interviewed on the six participating farms between September 2018 and January 2019. Employers were asked to post study advertisements in the workplace prior to the researchers’ visit. Upon arriving to the farm, the researchers explained the research objectives and format of the interview to potential participants, and most agreed to participate. A small number of people who heard the study description refused to participate but the researchers did not keep track of these numbers. Others who did not wish to participate may have simply avoided the researchers. Purposive sampling was used once the researchers arrived at the workplace. A random sample of employees could not be drawn because it would require accessing an employee roster, which would have violated participant confidentiality. To be eligible to participate, farmworkers had to be between eighteen and seventy years of age. Preference in recruiting was for Latino/a farmworkers because this group represents the majority of Pennsylvania mushroom workers. While there is no reliable data available on the share of women in the mushroom production workforce, conversations with industry stakeholders suggest that their numbers are small. Therefore, a preference in recruiting was shown for women farmworkers, to shed light on their experiences, which are often overlooked in research. Thus the sample likely oversamples for female workers.

Data collection

For the parent study, sixty mushroom workers participated in a structured interview of approximately thirty to forty-five minutes in duration. Approximately 10 minutes of the interview procedure covered occupational safety and health concerns. The interview procedure involved fixed response and some open-ended interview questions conducted using a structured guide. Limited follow-up questions were permitted for exploratory purposes in cases where workers said they were not rushed to return to work or home. Table 1 presents the health and safety related interview questions in Spanish and their English translations.

Table 1:

Occupational safety and health interview questions

¿Alguna vez ha sufrido de las siguientes condiciones en su trabajo? Si así fuera, describa cada uno. 1. Lesión       Sí □ No □ Si sí, describa: 2. Dolores y molestias  Sí □ No □ Si sí, describa:_______________________ 3. Sentirse enfermo (náuseas, mareos, diarrea)            Sí □ No □ Si sí, describa: ___________________________________ 4. Incómodo(a) debido a temperatura caliente o fría         Sí □ No □ Si sí, describa: 5. Incómodo(a) trabajando en la obscuridad            Sí □ No □ Si sí, describa: 6. Dificultad o incomodidad para respirar            Sí □ No □ Si sí, describa:_______________________ 7. Sentirse presionado para trabajar rápido            Sí □ No □ Si sí, describa:	Have you ever experienced any of the following at work? (If yes, please describe for each one). 1.Injury       Yes □ No □ If yes, describe: 2. Aches and pains   Yes □ No □ If yes, describe:_______________________ 3. Feeling ill (nausea, dizziness, diarrhea)           Yes □ No □ If yes, describe: ___________________________________ 4. Uncomfortable due to hot or cold temperature      Yes □ No □ If yes, describe: 5. Uncomfortable working in darkness            Yes □ No □ If yes, describe: 6. Difficulty or discomfort breathing:            Yes □ No □ If yes, describe:_______________________ 7. Feeling pressured to work fast            Yes □ No □ If yes, describe:
¿Existe algún aspecto de su trabajo que impacte sobre su salud o seguridad? Describa.	Are there any aspects of your job that impact your health or safety? Describe.

The interview template was developed in English and translated into Spanish by the researcher, then checked for accuracy by a research team member who is a native Spanish speaker. Prior to the start of the interview, oral consent was taken and participants were provided a $20 gift card. The research team was comprised of five interviewers who visited the farms in teams to conduct multiple interviews simultaneously. All interviews were conducted in Spanish and all research team members were either native Spanish speakers or had an advanced working proficiency in Spanish. The principal researcher reviewed the interview template with research team members in advance of their first interview, and continuously checked in with them during farm visits to ensure data collection was proceeding correctly. The interviews were conducted in private spaces such as lunchrooms, offices not in use, or in outdoor areas. All participant responses were written out by hand by the interviewer on a structured interview form. Interviewers were provided the option to request or not request that participants be audio-recorded, In total, twenty of the interviews were audio-recorded and professionally transcribed. Transcripts provided a limited amount of additional detail for open-ended questions. The remainder were not audio-recorded either because the participant refused, or because the interviewer did not ask to record the interview out of concern it would create response bias. On a few occasions, participants stopped the interview early or skipped questions because they had to return to work or to their break. As a result, there is minor variance in the total sample size for given questions.

Data analysis

Data were entered into an online Qualtrics database and subsequently downloaded into an Excel file. Identifiers (gender and age) were separated into a distinct Excel file to protect participant confidentiality. All data analysis was performed in Excel, including the preparation of descriptive statistics on participant characteristics and categorical coding of short open-ended responses. To code open-ended responses, all responses to a particular question were initially read through and a new code was created for each qualitatively new response. Then, each answer was read again and assigned to the appropriate code. Each answer was then reviewed a final time to check the accuracy of the coding procedure. Most data for women and men were analyzed separately but the sample size for women (15) was too small to conduct statistical comparisons.

Results

Participant characteristics

Table 2 presents basic personal characteristics for the sixty farmworkers who participated in the study (forty-five men and fifteen women). There were forty-seven harvesters in the sample (thirty-three men and fourteen women); the rest were employed as harvesting supervisors, truck drivers, product weighers, or in cleaning and maintenance of the mushroom houses. Of the fifteen female study participants, fourteen were employed primarily as harvesters, sometimes with limited additional cleaning duties, and one was a supervisor. The average age of female respondents was 34.6 (standard deviation of 8.2), and ranged from 28 to 61 years old. The average age of male respondents was 38.7 (standard deviation of 12.3), and ranged from ages 19 to 60 years old. In general, respondents rated their English language ability as low, with women more likely to report their speaking, reading, and writing abilities as “little” (one on a scale of one to three) than men. All participants in the study were born in a Latin American country, mainly Mexico, but also Guatemala and the Dominican Republic, except for one male U.S.-born worker.

Table 2:

Participant characteristics

	Women	Men
Gender	15	45
Age
18–25	-	7
26–35	12	12
36–45	2	12
46–55	-	7
56–65	1	7
Self-rated English language skills (1 to 3 scale where 1=little, 2=average, 3=well)
Speaking (average/ (standard deviation))	1.20 (0.41)	1.28 (0.59)
Reading (average/ (standard deviation))	1.01 (0.26)	1.30 (0.60)
Writing (average/ (standard deviation))	1.01 (0.26)	1.26 (0.58)

Injuries suffered at work

To open the discussion of occupational safety and health, we asked farmworkers if they had ever suffered an injury (a lesión in Spanish) while working on a mushroom farm. Twenty-two of fifty-nine workers who were asked this question responded affirmatively (four of fourteen women and eighteen of forty-five men). The coding process revealed mixed accounts of both injuries (such as back pain) and their causes (such as slips and falls, which can cause back pain and/or other injuries, or soil falling in the eyes, which can cause eye irritation). Of these twenty-two workers, one man reported having suffered three separate injuries of different types, and one woman reported having suffered two slips or falls. Moreover, several respondents mentioned that minor slips and falls happen often on mushroom farms and did not state exactly how many times they had slipped or fallen.

These twenty-two respondents were asked to describe the circumstances surrounding their injury(ies) (Table 3). The most common responses were slips or falls, back pain, soil in eyes, cuts from the harvesting knife, and sore or injured hands. Some workers volunteered information about requiring a hospital visit, a surgery, and/or taking time off work after suffering their injury. Where available, this information is included in Table 3 to help convey the severity of mushroom workplace injuries, but where the information is absent, it should not be interpreted as meaning that no subsequent medical attention was required.

Table 3:

Detailed mushroom worker descriptions of injuries suffered on mushroom farms

Description	Gender	Age
Slip/ Fall (reported by 15 workers)
(1) The board was not put in place properly and she slipped and fell to the ground. (2) She slipped when getting down from the harvesting bed where there were no boards and the earth was slippery. She fell backwards and hit her head. She went to the hospital. She was unable to work for two months.	F	35
Fell from the second floor due to the space on the sides of the walkway.	F	32
Slipped and fell when she was walking fast down the staircase from the second floor to the first. Someone from the farm checked her over and said it wasn’t serious.	F	33
Fell from the second floor. He was taken to the hospital by someone from the farm. He was able to continue working afterward.	M	30
He slipped and fell while leaning on a pipe that that got loose. He got up but his ribs were bruised purple. The injury was never examined by a doctor.	M	21
Several falls from the boards	M	22
Fell from the second boards	M	28
He was carrying some boxes and tripped his foot into the wood from inside where they walk. The foot didn’t hurt him until the next day, when he couldn’t stand up because he couldn’t move his foot. He was prescribed one week of rest from the doctor, and he took it.	M	42
He was hurt when walking on a staircase that was missing a step. When he stepped on the next one it broke and he fell. He ended up with a 25cm cut in his leg. This was the only staircase to use.	M	40
He had become tired from bending over and climbed up to the board. He slipped because sometimes the boards are wet, and sometimes when they are walking they are not concentrating. It was early in the morning and he was walking in a distracted way. It was a light injury, not serious. He hurt his arm and leg, but continued working that day.	M	29
Slipped from the boards and pulled a tendon.	M	28
Fell and hit the board.	M	45
Fell while working in doubles as a harvester when he first started working.	M	26
He slipped and fell as a harvester. The boards were wet in the morning. He had ankle surgery.	M	28
He fell from the third floor because the board broke. He fell to the ground. He could continue working but it hurts him while harvesting.	M	36
Back pain (reported by 5 workers)
Hurt her back from pulling a lot of weight.	F	31
Fractured lower back.	M	28
He had a box (either carrying or pulling) and felt a crack in his back.	M	60
Pain in his spine when he was watering one morning. He had to be examined by a doctor.	M	23
Hurt his back while picking up some boxes.	M	41
Soil in eyes causing irritation (reported by 2 workers)
Soil from mushroom beds got in his eyes.	M	28
Soil fell in his eyes and they became red. A nurse from the farm gave him some drops and it went away.	M	56
Cuts with harvesting knife (reported by 1 worker)
Sometimes cuts himself with harvesting knives.	M	23
Sore/ injured hand (reported by 1 worker)
He stopped being able to use one of his hands for work.	M	47
Unspecified (N=1)
Playing around while on break.	M	36

The most common response to the question about the circumstances of their injury(ies) was slips or falls. Falls from the second or third floors of the mushroom house frequently occurred due to broken boards or slats. Workers also reported slipping down broken or weak steps. For example, one male harvester attempted to skip a missing step on the stairs and, upon stepping on the next board, fell through because the board broke. He said that sometimes there are no other staircases in the mushroom house and workers must continue using a broken staircase. One female harvester slipped when several boards were misplaced, hitting her hand as she fell. One of the most extreme examples of injury from falls was provided by a male harvester who required ankle surgery following a fall on wet boards at work. Some workers described continuing to work after their slip or fall, despite suffering pain.

Back pain, the second most commonly response to this question, occurred while picking up or carrying heavy boxes, from repetitive bending motions, or from extended periods in awkward positions. One male harvester described how he fractured his back at work. Others felt pain upon picking up heavy loads or while watering mushrooms, which often entails carrying heavy equipment.

Other injury types were reported by one or two workers. Two workers reported irritation when soil from the mushroom beds fell into their eyes. Another male worker reported cutting his hand several times with the mushroom harvesting knife, and a harvester complained of no longer being able to use his hand for work.

Aches and pains, illness, and discomfort at work

Respondents were asked whether or not they had experienced aches and pains, felt ill, felt uncomfortable due to the hot or cold temperature, felt uncomfortable due to working in the dark, or had difficulty breathing while at work (Table 4). Those who responded affirmatively to any of these questions were asked to explain their answers. Some workers responded affirmatively to several questions and provided the same explanation for both problems (e.g. having suffered aches and pains due to the cold temperature, and feeling uncomfortable due to the cold temperature).

Table 4:

Mushroom farmworkers’ experiences of aches and pains, illness and discomfort at work

Have you ever experienced any of the following at work?	# of women who said Yes/Total # of women respondents	# of men who said Yes/Total # of men respondents
Aches and pains	2/ 13	14/ 43
Feeling ill (nausea, dizziness, diarrhea)	1/ 13	3/ 44
Uncomfortable due to hot or cold temperature	4/ 13	19/ 43
Uncomfortable working in darkness	1/ 13	8/ 43
Difficulty or discomfort breathing	1/ 13	3/ 44
Feeling pressured to work fast	0/ 13	9/ 43

We found that sixteen of fifty-six respondents had suffered aches and pains at work (two of thirteen women and fourteen of forty-three men). Of these, eight respondents complained of back pain from constantly bending over to harvest mushrooms. Three harvesters reported headaches or migraines from the cold in the facility, while two mentioned aching bones from the cold air. One worker said he suffered pain in his hands from washing the tarp covers for mushroom planting in cold water. Finally, one worker complained of arm pain from moving things.

Only four of fifty-seven respondents (one of thirteen women and three of forty-three men) said that they had ever felt ill (nausea, dizziness or diarrhea) at work. Most of the explanations for feeling sick at work were related to workers already being sick or suffering from a chronic issue. One worker who was interviewed on an Agaricus production farm reported feeling sick on a previous farm where he worked with Shiitake mushrooms, claiming that this particular mushroom releases spores that caused him to have a bad cough and trouble breathing.

Close to half (twenty-three of fifty-six of respondents (four of thirteen women and nineteen of forty-three men) had felt uncomfortable due to the temperature at work, most often specifying feeling cold, causing headaches or aching bones. One male worker reported experiencing chronic migraines due to the cold. Several workers discussed the stark temperature differences between rooms, which cause discomfort from having to adjust between hot and cold regularly. A female harvester noted that workers must always wear plastic gloves because the mushrooms freeze your hands when you grab them. Several workers highlighted the need to wear coats inside the building to combat the cold temperature.

We found that nine of fifty-six respondents (one of thirteen women and eight of forty-three men) felt uncomfortable about working in the dark. However, most of these workers cited that it was not a large problem because they work with lamps and because they had grown accustomed to the dim lighting. Only one worker mentioned the risk of tripping due to low light. Furthermore, only four of fifty-seven respondents (one of thirteen women and three of forty-three men) ever had difficulty breathing while at work. Here, the worker described above who had worked with shitake mushrooms repeated his concern, and another worker commented on breathing difficulties while cleaning out rotten mushrooms.

Workplace factors that affect health and safety

When asked if they had ever felt pressured to work fast, nine of fifty-six workers (zero of thirteen women and nine of forty-three men) responded affirmatively (Table 4). While some workers described this pressure as coming from supervisors, several workers claimed that this pressure was internal. That is, these workers said that they pressure themselves to work fast to make more money (since they are paid according to the volume of mushrooms they can pick within a limited time frame) and to finish the job quickly in order to leave work sooner. One worker reported that he pressures himself to work fast because the last person working sometimes receives ridicule from other workers for being slow.

All sixty workers were asked if there is anything about their job that affects their health or safety. In total twenty-six workers responded affirmatively (six of fifteen women and twenty of forty-five men) (Table 5). Those participants were asked to explain their affirmative response in further detail, sometimes listing multiple factors that impact their workplace health and safety (Table 6). In several cases, participants initially answered no, but continued on in their statements to clearly describe their perception of a minor or moderate risk or threat. We have coded those responses as affirmative.

Table 5:

Are there any aspects of your job that impact your health or safety?

	Yes	No
Women	6	9
Men	20	25
All participants	26	34

Table 6:

Aspects of the organization of work that farmworkers perceive to impact their health or safety

	Total # of mentions	# of mentions by women	# of mentions by men
Slippery or otherwise poor flooring, loose nails, or height (causing slips and falls)	10	5	5
Exposure to chemicals including pesticides	7	-	7
Physical demands of the job (i.e. kneeling, bending, picking up and carrying heavy boxes)	4	1	3
Cold temperatures inside facilities	3	-	3
Generalized risk of accidents exists	3	1	2
Inadequate cleaning of knives	1	-	1
Mushroom compost falling in eyes or face	1	-	1

The most common response (given by ten participants, including five women and five men) was that poor floor conditions and working up high can cause slips and falls. The next most common response was exposure to chemicals including pesticides used on the mushrooms and in the facility, despite workers’ required use of personal protective equipment (PPE). All seven participants who mentioned this concern were men. Furthermore, four participants, including one woman and three men, mentioned the physical demands of the work, such as the need to kneel, bend, walk up and down stairs, and pick up and carry heavy boxes, as a safety and health risk. Finally, small numbers of respondents mentioned the cold temperatures inside the mushroom facilities, a generalized risk of unintentional injury on the job, the inadequate cleaning of knives potentially causing infections, and mushroom compost falling into one’s eyes or face as additional occupational risks.

Discussion

Latino/a farmworkers on U.S. mushroom farms perceive many occupational safety and health hazards, as do Latino/a workers in other agricultural industries. This study finds that mushroom workers clearly perceive several aspects of their workplaces to influence their safety and health, including both indoor infrastructural elements of the workplace and the organization of work. The risks perceived to be presented by the indoor infrastructure of mushroom production houses include wooden boards and walkways, which are sometimes poorly maintained, and the cool temperature maintained during harvesting. The risks perceived to be presented by the organization of work include the application of chemicals including pesticides, physical demands of the job such as bending, reaching, or lifting heavy items, the use of small knives, contact with compost at the harvesting site that can cause eye irritation, and the piece rate payment system. Therefore, a key finding of the study is that the indoor infrastructure and organization of work in mushroom farming create a unique working environment that poses specific occupational safety and health risks to the immigrant women and men who perform these jobs.

When asked to describe any injuries they had suffered at work, the most common response was slips and falls attributed to poor flooring conditions, sometimes in combination with working up high (on the second or third story of the facility). Slips and falls are not an injury in themselves but rather incidents that can lead to multiple forms of injury. The fact that participants often responded to a question about workplace injuries by describing a slip or fall indicates some confusion in responding to the question. However, this finding also underscores the strength of farmworkers’ perceptions that they are at risk of hurting themselves by slipping and falling on wooden flooring. Previous research has indicated the prevalence of slips, trips, and falls among immigrant agricultural workers [5]. This study suggests that slipping and falling due to poor flooring conditions is the primary safety and health risk perceived by mushroom workers. Further research that obtains mushroom workers’ objective injury reports, including those related to slipping and falling, is needed.

Temperature controls represent another aspect of the indoor infrastructure of mushroom production that workers perceive to present a health risk. Although facilities are alternatively warmed and cooled, depending on the stage of the growth cycle, most respondents specified experiencing discomfort due to cold temperatures. This is likely because participants were primarily employed as harvesters and thus most likely to be working in cool temperatures. Moreover, although the ideal temperature for mushroom harvesting is between 60 and 66 degrees, which may seem a comfortable temperature, our findings suggest that workers find this working temperature to be cold enough to pose a health risk. That is, aches and pains, migraines, aching bones, and colds were all mentioned by our participants as health concerns stemming from working in cold temperatures. While the problem of heat stress for farmworkers is rightfully being emphasized in the literature in the context of a warming climate [51,52], problems associated with cold temperatures have been less analyzed. Further research is needed on the potential relationship between long-term, year-round exposure to working in cold indoor temperatures.

This study also finds that mushroom workers perceive the organization of work, including the application of chemicals including pesticides, the physical demands of the job (such as bending, reaching, lifting, and carrying heavy items), the use of small knives, contact with compost at the harvesting site that can cause eye irritation, and the piece rate payment system as workplace hazards. In response to several interview questions, workers raised the issue of back pain, and often associated it with the organization of work. That is, when asked to describe injuries suffered in the workplace, back pain was the second most common response (even though it is not an injury per se). Participants’ further descriptions of the circumstances consistently referred to carrying, lifting, or pulling heavy items. Moreover, when asked about aches or pains at work, half of participants referred to back pain. Finally, participants often asserted that back pain was associated with the physical demands of the job, which was a common response to the question about factors that shape safety and health in the workplace. This finding corroborates literature which has found that the organization of farm work contributes to the emergence of specific forms of MSD in farmworkers [28–31]. It also aligns with Seth Holmes ethnographic account of the organization of work in the Washington State strawberry industry, in which tasks associated with back pain are more likely to be performed by structurally vulnerable immigrant workers [9]. Future research on occupational safety and health with mushroom farmworkers should continue to focus on the relationship between the organization of work in mushroom farming and the associated emergence of particular forms of MSD, including but not exclusive to back pain.

A final condition of mushroom farm work that may contribute to exposure to occupational safety and health is the piece rate payment system. Although the proportion of respondents who affirmed feeling pressured to work fast (nine of fifty-six) is not high, participants often intimated a sense of responsibility to work fast. That is, in a separate section of the interview related to wages and hours, both male and female workers often described their sense of responsibility to work fast to increase their take-home pay. This indicates that pressure to work fast is instilled at least in part by the piece rate pay system. Studies have shown that perceived pressure to work fast contributes to increased risk of occupational injury [4]. More research is needed on the possible relationship between piece rate pay and incidence of unintentional injury in the mushroom industry.

Several hypotheses stemming from the literature review were not confirmed by this study. Although extensive literature highlights mushroom farmworkers’ risk of developing respiratory issues from mushroom spore inhalation [32–41], only four participants of fifty-seven had experienced difficulty or discomfort breathing. Longitudinal analysis is needed to measure long-term health effects of air and spore exposure for mushroom workers. One worker spoke at length of his perceptions that working with shitake mushrooms had created respiratory illness for him, a finding suggested in the literature on the production of Asian mushrooms including shitake [41]. Thus, research focusing on those with direct exposure to this specific mushroom vareity is needed. Moreover, only nine of fifty-seven participants had ever felt uncomfortable working in the darkness, and some suggested that mushroom production is more well-lit in contemporary times than in the past. Also, only four of fifty-seven participants reported feeling ill at work.

There is some evidence of gender differences in perceptions of workplace hazards on mushroom farms. Five of the six women in the sample who said that there was something about their workplace that affected their health and safety mentioned the slippery or otherwise poor floor conditions, which they see to cause slips and falls, as compared to only five of twenty men. It is possible that women were more likely to express concern over slips and falls due to spending more time in cleaning activities involving liquids, although the study did not quantify hours spent in secondary tasks to harvesting such as cleaning. Women were less likely than men to respond affirmatively when asked if they had experienced aches and pains at work, if they felt uncomfortable working in the darkness, and if they felt pressured to work fast. One possible explanation for women’s lesser degree of concern over these issues is that they have worked for a shorter period of time as mushroom production workers than men, and thus have been exposed to these concerns for less time than men. Since the research on occupational safety and health among Latina farmworkers is limited and has focused primarily on pesticide- and heat-related illness and on workplace sexual violence and harassment [10–17], the gender-related findings from this study cannot be directly compared to an existing research base. Further research that seeks to identify differences in occupational safety and health risk perceptions between women and men mushroom production workers is needed. Moreover, women self-reported lower levels of English language ability, suggesting they may have more difficulty understanding safety and health information provided only in English. Public health interventions in the mushroom sector must take women’s and men’s respective English language and overall literacy levels into account.

Study Limitations

There are several limitations to this study. First, the researchers had no prior relationship with respondents, which implies they may have underreported their health and safety concerns due to low levels of researcher-participant trust. Second, some workers may have felt rushed to finish the interview quickly in order to return to work and thus truncated their answers. Third, our sample size of sixty workers, while sufficient for our descriptive analysis, is small and was drawn purposively, and thus cannot be assumed to be representative of workers across the industry. Fourth, the farms that agreed to host the research team for the worker interviews might have better workplace conditions with respect to safety and health, thus also potentially leading to an under-representation of the extent of workers’ safety and health concerns in the mushroom industry. On the other hand, those workers with labor grievances may have been most interested to speak with the researchers, potentially over-representing workers who hold concerns. Fifth, no standardized measures of respiratory function were used. Finally, the qualitative approach to this study entailed a coding process for open-ended questions, introducing the possibility for results to be biased towards the researcher’s assumptions. However, the relatively short nature of most open-ended responses and the measures taken to check the validity of codes reduces the likelihood of bias in coding.

Conclusion

Mushroom production is a large industry employing a sizeable Latino/a immigrant farmworker population but very little literature has explored how they perceive and experience risks to occupational safety and health on the job. This qualitative study of forty-five male and fifteen female workers on six mushroom farms found that approximately one-third of workers have been injured on the job and that nearly half perceive there are factors in the workplace that affect their safety and health. The research has shown that both the indoor infrastructure of mushroom production, including poor flooring conditions and cool indoor temperatures, and the organization of mushroom production work, including exposure to chemicals including pesticides, the physical demands of the job, use of small knives, contact with compost, and the piece rate payment system are perceived as safety and health risks in mushroom farm workplaces. Workers commonly discussed back pain and believed it was associated with the organization of work. Some limited gender differences were found, including a greater concern over slips and falls due to poor flooring conditions among women, and less concern among women over aches and pains. Based on our findings, we recommend that future research obtain objective reports of injury, aches and pains, and discomfort and test for relationships between these reports and the indoor infrastructure and organization of work. This research should examine how gender shapes workers’ exposure to workplace hazards.