Early in the morning, children board a school bus
but they're not headed to school.
They're going to work.
They're among the thousands of kids who work on tobacco farms in the United States each year.
I was in the middle of the road pulling the suckers out in the flowers.
My head start hurting really bad
and I start seeing all black
so I got out the road and I started throwing up.
Under US 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.
The US government doesn't even recognize that this work is hazardous.
Children who spend all day picking tobacco
are exposed to toxic pesticides.
The long-term health effects can include cancer
damage to the nervous system
and impacts on reproductive health.
If you're a kid and your body is still developing,
you're even more vulnerable to toxins.
Sometime last year they sprayed beside us while we were working in tobacco fields
and...that's when I got sick.
When they spray, you...you can tell the chemical
it is very very very strong.
I couldn't work at all. I couldn't even stand. I was just laying in the bed.
Tobacco workers can suffer nicotine poisoning,
also known as green tobacco sickness.
It's a hazard specific to tobacco farming.
It happens when workers absorb nicotine through their skin
while handling tobacco
especially when it's wet.
We spoke to a hundred and forty-one children working on US tobacco farms.
Most of them reported symptoms consistent with acute nicotine poisoning.
If you're cutting the wet [tobacco]
the worst thing about it, you'll get,
you'll get fevers.
When you're in the barn you can get sick just by the smell of it.
Children can absorb as much nicotine as if they were actually smoking
and the long-term impact on their health is unknown.
When it's wet in the mornings we have to wear trash bags
but like around 10 or 11 it starts getting really really hot.
So like since the trash bags attract heat,
you're like just like burning inside.
The bags are not provided to us we had to buy the bags.
And if you're not wearing a trash bag, and your whole body gets wet,
when it gets dry out with the sun, you feel sick.
It's like you getting the flu.
Most of the children we spoke to were teenagers,
but some were much younger.
Samuel is 9 years old.
He goes along with his family to the fields,
and usually sell sodas to workers.
But sometimes he also helps with farming.
There's no one to babysit me
while my mom, my brother, and sister are working.
My sister is 16.
My brother's 13.
When I first went out to feel it I didn't know what to do.
I use a knife to cut the flower on top off.
Child tobacco workers told us they hurt themselves using sharp tools
and working around machinery
and that they faced other dangers.
Almost all of us climb up onto the wooden beams,
that are 10, 15, 20, 30 meters high.
Sometimes you can step in the wrong place and fall all the way down.
If you suffer an accident, you can even lose your life.
It is very dangerous.
They told us they were utterly exhausted,
most working 50 to 60 hours a week
often in extreme heat.
Some said their employers didn't give them drinking water
or access to bathrooms.
Your neck starts hurting, your shoulders are hurting,
and you're just like — your body wants to give up.
It feels like you can't feel your legs and
you gotta take breaks.
I use the bathroom before I leave,
and I just wait til I get back here.
We start working at 6 and we get out at 6
and I just wait till I get home.
It feels horrible because you feel like there's no air
and you look down you look beside,
and then you only halfway done
and you feel like it's time for us to get out,
cuz you feel like you're gonna die in there
As Hispanic people we work for less than other people would.
It's not, I wouldn't say it's like slavery back in the day
but we'll work for pretty much anything
just to help our family out
and it's really hard because if you pay rent
some of us actually get put out on the road, on the street
and we don't have nowhere else to go.
Patricia is a tobacco worker.
She's a mother of six children aged 4 to 17.
Her entire family works in tobacco
with the exception of her youngest child.
The more sticks we cut, the more money we make.
With their money, they try to buy like the school supplies we can't buy for them.
I want them to actually complete high school and get the diploma
and get good jobs where they don't have that always work in the field in the heat.
90% of US tobacco is grown in four states.
The biggest tobacco companies in the world,
including those that make some of the most popular cigarettes,
purchase tobacco grown on farms where children are working.
These companies have the responsibility
to keep children out of hazardous work on tobacco farms.
Child labor should not be made in the USA.
If I have kids one day like I wouldn't let them work in the field
because since I work there I know what it's like
and wouldn't want them to go through the same thing I went through.
I wouldn't want to know that they're out in the heat like I was.
I would want them to have a better life.