A link is possible between pesticides and the births of three severely deformed children to farmworkers who labored in Eastern North Carolina, state officials say, although they don't have the data to prove it definitively.

But a report released Tuesday says the children's problems -- and the lack of information about what caused them -- should be a call to action.

Health officials called for closer communication among the state's Agriculture, Labor and Health departments. They want more outreach to farmworkers and stricter enforcement of state pesticide laws. And they outline a program, to begin in October, that will track pesticide illnesses.

"Right now, there are different agencies doing bits and pieces," said Sheila Higgins, a nurse with the Department of Health and Human Services who helped write the report. "But nobody ever really pulls the data together to try to describe the number of cases [of pesticide poisoning] that are really occurring, and who it's happening to."

The report is the result of a 10-month study of three children born to migrant farm laborers who picked tomatoes for Ag-Mart, a corporate grower. One child has no limbs, another has a deformed jaw, and a third, who died, had no nose or visible sex organs. They were born within seven weeks, from December 2004 to February 2005.

The study began last summer after the Agriculture Department heard about the children. The department's pesticide section charged the company with 369 violations of pesticide law and asked health officials to investigate the cause of the birth defects.

Agriculture Department inspectors say that Ag-Mart failed to keep workers, including the three pregnant women, out of the fields for required intervals after spraying pesticides.

Ag-Mart is contesting those charges. Company officials say that their workers were protected from pesticide exposure and that the state misinterpreted their records.

Not enough data

Ag-Mart, a Florida company, grows more than 1,000 acres of grape tomatoes in Eastern North Carolina and employs hundreds of migrant workers during the growing season. It markets its tiny tomatoes under the brand name Santa Sweets and also sells them under store labels.

In Tuesday's report, state health officials said that without knowing how much of the chemicals the women absorbed, there is no way to prove that pesticides caused the children's deformities. But the report says that all three women, at critical times in their pregnancies, worked in fields treated with pesticides known to cause birth defects.

Ag-Mart officials said the report established no link between chemicals and the deformities.

"We would all like answers to the questions regarding the birth defects of the three children," Ag-Mart President Don Long said Tuesday in a statement. "We sincerely hope that we'll learn the truth someday soon and that it will offer some level of consolation to the families."

Andrew Yaffa, a Florida lawyer who represents the three women, said the study bolsters his case that pesticides are to blame for the children's defects. He has sued Ag-Mart on behalf of Francisca Herrera, whose son was born without arms or legs. Yaffa says Herrera often was doused with chemicals while pregnant.

"If you read between the lines, this report screams that there's a problem," Yaffa said.

The state's strongest evidence is in Herrera's case.

She spent dozens of hours working in fields freshly treated with the fungicide mancozeb, the report says. That chemical has caused limb defects and missing bones in the offspring of lab rats.

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