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A Review of Non-occupational Pathways for Pesticide Exposure in Women Living in Agricultural Areas
Citation:
Deziel, N., M. Friesen, J. Hoppin, C. Hines, K. Thomas, AND L. Freeman. A Review of Non-occupational Pathways for Pesticide Exposure in Women Living in Agricultural Areas. ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH PERSPECTIVES. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), Research Triangle Park, NC, 123(6):1-2, (2015).
Impact/Purpose:
The National Exposure Research Laboratory’s (NERL’s) Human Exposure and Atmospheric Sciences Division (HEASD) conducts research in support of EPA’s mission to protect human health and the environment. HEASD’s research program supports Goal 1 (Clean Air) and Goal 4 (Healthy People) of EPA’s strategic plan. More specifically, our division conducts research to characterize the movement of pollutants from the source to contact with humans. Our multidisciplinary research program produces Methods, Measurements, and Models to identify relationships between and characterize processes that link source emissions, environmental concentrations, human exposures, and target-tissue dose. The impact of these tools is improved regulatory programs and policies for EPA.
Description:
Women living in agricultural areas may experience relatively high pesticide exposures compared to women in urban or suburban areas due to their proximity to farm activities. However, exposure pathways in these women are not well-characterized. We reviewed the evidence for the contribution of non-occupational pathways of pesticide exposure in women living in agricultural areas by surveying the published literature. Non-occupational pathways include para-occupational (i.e., take-home or bystander exposure), agricultural drift, residential pesticide use, and dietary ingestion. Among the 37 publications identified, we identified strong evidence for the importance of the para-occupational and agricultural drift pathways and moderate evidence that residential use of pesticides contributed significantly to exposure. There was insufficient evidence to understand the contribution of diet to overall pesticide exposure. Our review did not identify any hygiene factors that were consistently linked to exposure. One-third of the studies collected measurements from women specifically; most evidence was based on studies with less-specific measurements of pesticides in residential dust. Disentangling exposure pathways was difficult because agricultural populations are concurrently exposed to pesticides via multiple pathways, and the exposure metrics commonly used in the literature often aggregated over multiple pathways. Results based on biomarkers and dust samples were inconsistent, possibly reflecting different exposure time windows and routes. An improved understanding of the important pathways of pesticide exposure in women living in agricultural areas is critical for epidemiologic studies and for designing effective risk mitigation strategies.
URLs/Downloads:
EHP JOURNAL ARTICLE DEZIEL FINAL MANUSCRIPT.PDF (PDF, NA pp, 422.583 KB, about PDF)Environmental Health Perspectives
