Nearly all farm workers in a recent study in Florida were dehydrated at the end of their vegetable-production shifts, and more than half were still dehydrated the following morning.
The study, a partnership between the University of Illinois-Chicago and the Farmworker Association of Florida, used urine samples collected first thing in the morning, at lunch, and at the end of a shift to assess the risk of dehydration over five days in May 2021 and May 2022 at a vegetable farm in southern Florida. A total of 111 workers, most of them men from Mexico and Guatemala, participated in the study, which is published in the journal Environmental Research dated June 15, 2024.
By one measure, almost all the samples taken at the end of a shift — 97 percent — showed probable dehydration. Of samples taken the following morning, 62 percent showed probable dehydration. (For comparison, while many news outlets say that 75 percent of the general population in the U.S. is chronically dehydrated, the National Institutes of Health say that there’s no medical literature to back up that claim.)
For many farm workers in the Florida study, “there was no recovery,” said lead author Chibuzor Abasilim, a post-doctoral scholar in the Division of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences at UIC’s School of Public Health. Indeed, as the work week progressed, the morning samples showed increasingly higher levels of dehydration.
“It was getting worse every day. It’s pervasive, progressive dehydration,” said coauthor Lee Friedman, a research professor in the School of Public Health. Acute dehydration can cause fatigue, muscle cramps, and dizziness, while chronic dehydration can lead to kidney dysfunction.
The researchers ran other sample analyses using more conservative dehydration measures approved by the National Collegiate Athletics Association and the U.S. military. Even using these measures, the researchers still found high dehydration rates in end-of-shift samples, at 83 percent using the NCAA measure and 55 percent using the military measure.
Farmworkers are particularly vulnerable to dehydration. The researchers said they are generally paid based on the amount of crops they pick, so there is an incentive to work longer and faster. This means taking a break to drink water or to urinate can cost them money. The researchers also indicated that they are often treated as expendable and know they can be replaced if they complain or don’t work fast enough.
According to the National Agricultural Statistics Service, the average farm worker wage was $15.75/hour across all of Florida but was $15.90 for the southeast region of the state in 2023. Florida’s state minimum wage is $13/hour.
Additionally, they are often housed on the farms where they’re working, which can make it hard to access consistent health care or even “go to the grocery store to buy more Gatorade,” explained coauthor Dana Madigan, a research assistant professor at the School of Public Health who is affiliated with the UIC Great Lakes Center for Farmworker Health and Wellbeing.
The researchers said various solutions are needed to address these workers’ precarious position. They stated that more stringent federal regulations, such as a proposed heat standard currently under consideration by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, would help, as would smaller interventions such as closer bathroom facilities or mobile fans and shade units in the fields.
However, the researchers also caution that new rules will likely go unheeded unless larger changes are made to how both farms and farm workers are compensated.
The research team is interested in conducting future studies to examine how well workers recover from dehydration over time, whether it’s during their standard one day off a week, between picking assignments as they move between farms to follow the harvest, or between seasons when they generally return to their home countries.