Nicotine Poisoning

Visualize a ten-year-old Mexican girl working 50 to 60 hours a week with tobacco leaves, each touch poisoning her body. She is feeling too ill to work. All across the world, 168 million children suffer terribly due to child labor (ILO). The enforcement of child labor has children getting sick and uneducated; some, however, argue there are two sides of the unreasonable activities happening throughout the world. Although child labor provides an option for children to gain money for their families, they are getting severe, long-term diseases that can kill them. In 1975, when the Industrial Revolution came to the United States, families frantically sent their children to work in the fields to gain enough money for their families. Children today

Nicotine is a toxic, colorless, or yellowish oily liquid that is the chief active constituent of tobacco; meaning, this type of poisoning is harmful to young children working in the tobacco fields. Specifically, Step Vaessen, an author for “Asia Pacific,” claims the nicotine poisoning can do more than just poison the workers. He insinuates, “Exposure to nicotine means the chemical can enter the worker’s body through skin pores and cause adverse effects”(Vaessen 2016). In other words, nicotine poisoning can put adolescents in critical danger, causing them to get very sick and possibly die. Moreover, the families are not able to afford medical care to support the sick and dying child. Nicotine poisoning affects many child laborers around the world, including Jimena. She is a 14-year-old child laborer working in Guatemala. She claims the Nicotine poisoning drastically makes her extremely ill. “Sometime last year, they [were] spraying beside us while we were working in tobacco fields and that’s when I got sick”(2014). Poor children are continuously suffering from the terrible poison they cannot escape from. Not only are they becoming critically sick from the nicotine, the companies are forcing the workers to maintain busy in the fields. Those fortunate of health and education get to leave school or work to get medical attention. Child laborers have to work through any conditions, even life-threatening diseases. Young children are also under the influence of tobacco. Vaessen claims: “Under U.S. law, children have to be 18 to buy a pack of cigarettes, but they can work on tobacco farms when they are 12- or even younger”(Vaessen 2016). The usage of tobacco in the fields are the same as individuals choosing to chew tobacco. Tobacco, in any shape and form, includes nicotine and can do severe damage to the human body. Therefore, companies in charge of the workers