Many Hispanic farmworker families in North Carolina live in inadequate housing that puts them at higher risk of exposure to disease, toxins and overcrowding that can affect their psychological well-being, according to new research by Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
"Our findings suggest that the health of farmworker families is at risk due to inadequate housing," said Thomas Arcury, Ph.D., lead researcher.
"There has been very little research to document the housing in which farmworker families live," said Arcury, professor of family and community medicine.
Previous research on housing quality in general has found that it is an important determinant of health.
This study focused on describing the specific housing conditions of immigrant farmworker families in North Carolina and identifying housing features that place these families at risk for environmental exposures.
Participants were from households that contained at least one adult farmworker with at least one young child.
More than half of the participants (54 percent to 71 percent across the four surveys) live in mobile homes, compared to 7 percent of the general U.S. population and 15 percent of the rural U.S. population.
The dwellings are small, exacerbating the crowded conditions caused by the large size of farmworker households that may include related and unrelated adults.
The research was funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).
Read more from this post.
