Page 268 - SpringBoard_ELA_Grade8_Flipbook

aCTIvITy 3.19
continued
7 “Once your son has cancer, it’s pretty hard to take,” Juan Rodriguez says. “You hope it’s a mistake, you pray. He was a real nice boy. He took it strong and lived as long as he could.”
8 I keep a picture of Johnnie Rodriguez. He is sitting on his bed, hugging his Teddy bears. His sad eyes and cherubic face stare out at you. The photo was taken four days before he died.
9 Johnnie Rodriguez was one of 13 McFarland children diagnosed with cancer in recent years; and one of six who have died from the disease. With only 6,000 residents, the rate of cancer in McFarland is 400 percent above normal.
10 In McFarland and in Fowler childhood cancer cases are being reported in excess of expected rates. In Delano and other farming towns, questions are also being raised.
11 The chief source of carcinogens in these communities are pesticides from the vineyards and fields that encircle them. Health experts believe the high rate of cancer in McFarland is from pesticides and nitrate-containing fertilizers leaching into the water system from surrounding fields.
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12 Farm workers and their families are exposed to pesticides from the crops they work. The soil the crops are grown in. Drift from sprays applied to adjoining fields— and often to the very field where they are working.
13 The fields that surround their homes are heavily and repeatedly sprayed. Pesticides pollute irrigation water and groundwater.
14 Children are still a big part of the labor force. Or they are taken to the fields by their parents because there is no child care.
15 Pregnant women labor in the fields to help support their families. Toxic exposure begins at a very young age—often in the womb.
16 What does acute pesticide poisoning produce?
17 Eye and respiratory irritations. Skin rashes. Systemic poisoning.
18 Death.
19 What are the chronic effects of pesticide poisoning on people, including farm
workers and their children, according to scientific studies?
20 Birth defects. Sterility. Still births. Miscarriages. Neurological and neuropsychological effects. Effects on child growth and development.
21 Cancer.
22 Do we feel deeply enough the pain of those who must work in the fields every day with these poisons? Or the anguish of the families that have lost loved ones to cancer? Or the heartache of the parents who fear for the lives of their children? Who are raising children with deformities? Who agonize the outcome of their pregnancies?
My Notes
GraMMar USaGe
Sentence Fragments
In almost all cases, incomplete sentences
are incorrect. There are instances, however, where they can be used for effect. Look at paragraphs 17 and 18. These are incomplete sentences because they have no verbs. Paragraph 16, though, asks about
the effects of pesticide poisoning. By following with a set of sentence fragments, each danger is emphasized more than it would be in a regular sentence separated with commas.
Think about how sentence fragments might help emphasize a point in your writing.
Unit 3 • The Challenge to Make a Difference 241
carcinogen: a substance that causes cancer
pesticides: chemicals used to kill insects
leaching: draining toxic: poisonous
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