Muck Farms

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Muck farms caused lupus, some suspect

By Colarossi | Sentinel Staff Writer

Posted December 28, 2001

Farmworkers who once toiled in the pesticide-laced muck farms off Lake Apopka have complained for years of common symptoms: unusual rashes, swelling and arthritic conditions.

Others who grew up near the farms noticed common ailments, too. But often the connections were made during small talk and shrugged off as coincidence.

Now there is growing concern that working in or near the muck farms has left lasting health consequences.

At least 50 cases of lupus have been documented in the area around the lake, and an organization that represents farmworkers is pushing for a comprehensive study of whether the maladies are connected to the muck farms.

The Lake Apopka Project, an arm of the Farmworker Association of Florida, is trying to launch a health survey to map the history of the disease in and around Apopka and identify potential sources of lupus and other ailments.

A Lupus Foundation of America branch office in south Apopka has found at least 50 cases of lupus in people living in Apopka, Zellwood and Plymouth, said Tinsley, an office coordinator who suffers from the disease herself.

"We do have a high number of lupus cases," Tinsley said. "I'm not sure why."

At least 35 of those cases have direct or familial links to the muck farms -- including Tinsley, whose mother worked the fields through her pregnancy. Tinsley's twin sister has symptoms common to lupus, but doctors haven't definitively diagnosed her with the disease.

'Life-threatening'

Liz Buckley, coordinator for the Lake Apopka Project, has independently documented 12 diagnosed cases of lupus among former Lake Apopka farmworkers and their family members or northwest Orange County residents living near the old muck farms.

"There is a high incidence of lupus in the Apopka community," Buckley said. "They're experiencing significant and life-threatening health problems."

Lupus, an autoimmune disease in which the body's normal defenses attack healthy tissues and cells, typically afflicts 20 to 50 out of every 100,000 Americans, depending on the characteristics of the population.

Studies nationwide are trying to find a link between the disease and pesticides such as those used for decades at the muck farms that surrounded Lake Apopka.

But getting a government-backed study done in northwest Orange might not be easy.

Bill Toth, an epidemiologist with the Orange County Health Department, said he hadn't heard about a high number of lupus cases in the Apopka area and cautioned that any research on the issue must be carefully conducted.

"They are of the belief there are quite a number of things affecting their people up there," Toth said of the Farmworker Association. "They're trying to see if there's any relationship between lupus and pesticide exposure."

The county would investigate a lupus "cluster" only if carefully culled data showed a significant difference from the normal number of lupus cases that would be expected in a defined area.

"But it would have to be a significant difference," Toth said.

Dead birds tied to pesticides

Advocates started looking to the old muck fields for the cause of farmworkers' lingering ailments in June, after federal wildlife officials confirmed 1,000 bird deaths along the shores of Lake Apopka had been traced to pesticides.

But some people suffering with lupus suspected an environmental cause long before the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announcement.

Doctors told Margaret "" Buck she had lupus when she was 28. They told her sister Harriet Stutzman she had the same autoimmune disorder years later. Then, Harriet and Margaret's childhood next-door neighbor Sharon Willicome was diagnosed.

All three grew up on Avenue in Zellwood. None worked in the fields north of Lake Apopka, but they lived close enough to see muck from the farms collect on their windowsills, and they all drank from a community well still in use.

"There's a high incidence of people with autoimmune disorders there," said Buck, who now lives in Lake County. "We've all been concerned: Is there a correlation?"

Buckley says the assumption among sick farmworkers and family members she works with is that pesticides caused their conditions. She is trying to generate awareness in the community so people uncertain about their conditions can be properly diagnosed and treated. And she wants the potential cause of the lupus cases investigated.

"I think it's common sense that we need to look at chemical contamination and environmental exposure here in Apopka," Buckley said.

Links tough to prove

Proving such a link has been elusive. No scientific evidence has definitively linked pesticide exposure to lupus, though medical studies have attempted to trace a correlation, and such an association has been suggested in medical writing for years.

The latest effort studied a lupus cluster in Nogales, Ariz. In the December issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology, researchers said they couldn't establish a "statistical association" between pesticide exposure and the disease.

However, their results showed that the prevalence of one form of lupus was higher in Nogales than in the general U.S. population and that the studied groups had past exposure to chlorinated pesticides, such as DDT, and ongoing exposure to organophosphates.

Similar chemicals, including DDT, were used on the Lake Apopka muck farms.

Lupus is a chronic disease in which the body's immune system becomes hyperactive and attacks normal tissue and cells. The disease can be hard to diagnose because its symptoms -- including achy joints, fatigue, skin rashes and kidney problems -- mimic those of other, more-common conditions.

Cases can be mild, moderate or life-threatening. Most can be controlled with treatment. But lupus has no cure.

Up to 2 million U.S. cases

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Lupus Foundation of America estimate 1.4 million to 2 million Americans suffer from the disease."The problem with lupus is there is so much we don't know about the disease," said Duane s, a vice president of the land-based Lupus Foundation

"We don't really understand lupus to the degree that we would like," he said. "We know what is happening; we just don't know why."

Doctors do know the disease is more likely to afflict women, particularly black and Hispanic women.

But s said research continues on geographic "clusters" and environmental triggers in those areas.

But some in Apopka say they have little doubt about the cause.

Geraldean , 51, is convinced pesticides used for decades on the muck farms have contributed to the health problems of local farmworkers and their children.

For 30 years, labored in the fields off Lake Apopka and routinely brought her daughters to work.

Today, two of her adult children are diagnosed with lupus.

"We have a lot of sick people here in Apopka -- Apopka, Plymouth and Zellwood," said. "We're finding a lot of lupus cases."

While not suffering from lupus herself, said she suffered health problems that forced her to abandon farm work in the early 1990s. She had terrible nosebleeds, headaches and a constant, nagging itch all over. She attributes her own lingering health problems and those of her children to pesticide exposure.

"All my kids were raised up in the fields where I worked," said. "There was a lot of pesticide exposure. You got sprayed every day. They would spray while you were working in the fields."

'Nobody is paying attention'

One of 's daughters suffered what doctors diagnosed as a stroke when she was 3. Her other daughter had four miscarriages before doctors determined she had lupus.

said she would like to see people with lupus and common symptoms tested -- just as the federal government investigated what caused birds to die around Lake Apopka.

"All most people want are blood tests so they can find out if it's the pesticides," she said. "Nobody is paying the farmworkers any attention. Birds and alligators and fish and everything are more important than the people."

Colarossi can be reached at acolarossi@... or 407-420-6218.