Association of health symptoms with low-level exposure to organophosphates, DNA damage, AChE activity, and occupational knowledge and practice among rice, corn, and double-crop farmers

Abstract

Objectives:This study aims to determine (1) total dialkylphosphate ( ΣDAP ) levels, occupational knowledge and practice, DNA damage, AChE activity, and health symptoms in rice, corn, and double-crop farmers ; ( 2 ) the association of health symptoms with ΣDAP levels, occupational knowledge and practice, DNA damage, and AChE activity in farmers; and (3) the prevalence of health symptoms between farmers and nonfarmers. Methods : A cross-sectional study was conducted by interviewing as well as analyzing urine and blood samples during July to August 2014. Results : There were no differences in ΣDAP levels, AChE activity, and occupational knowledge and practice scores among all farmer groups. In terms of health symptoms related to ΣDAP, AChE activity, DNA damage, and occupational knowledge and practice, pesticide-related symptoms were determined, including breathlessness, chest pain, dry throat, numbness, muscle weakness, cramp, headache, dizziness, eye irritation, white/red rash, and white/ red pimple, which were classified as respiratory, muscle, nervous, and epithelial symptoms. A remarkable finding was that farmers had a significantly higher prevalence of muscle weakness (odds ratio (OR)=3.79) and numbness (OR=3.45) as compared with non-farmers. Conclusion: Our findings, therefore, suggest that a long-term lowlevel exposure to organophosphates (OPs) may be associated with an increasing prevalence of muscle symptoms. However, a further cohort study incorporating sensitive health outcomes and measurement of multiple pesticides monitoring on a larger scale is warranted.

The Pesticide Exposure of People Living in Agricultural Community, Northern Thailand

“…DAPs concentrations were 2 times higher in rice growers in the present study compared to rice growers in another province of Thailand [23] and to school-aged children in a rice-growing area in northeastern Thailand [11]. The higher concentrations found in the present study compared to previous studies may be due to the differences in the areas, age of subjects, type of target insects, type of pesticides used for crop protection, and the behavior of growers in each area.…”

The socio-economic impacts of organic and conventional olive growing in Italy

“…The exposure to synthetic phytoiatric prod-ucts such as insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, and fertilizers is the reasons for the main difference between the two scenarios. Indeed, the COG scenario exposes workers, with a strong association, to the risks of colorectal carcinoma (1.176 hours), asthma (588 hours), myelodysplastic syndromes (588 hours), REM sleep behaviour disorder (300 hours), muscle weakness (212 hours), numbness (212 hours) and cutaneous melanoma (89 hours) (Salameh et al, 2006;Lo et al, 2010;Postuma et al, 2012;Fortes et al, 2016;Avgerinou et al, 2017;Hongsibsong et al, 2017). In addition, with a moderate association, the COG scenario exposes workers to the risks of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (588 hours), renal cell carcinoma (89 hours) and non-Hodgkin lymphoma (89 hours) (Hu et al, 2002;Fritschi et al, 2005;Hohenadel et al, 2011;Kang et al, 2014).…”

Clinical effects of chemical exposures on mitochondrial function

“…In recent years, the deleterious effect of environmental toxins on mitochondrial function has been studied extensively in humans (Eldakroory et al, 2016, Cremonese et al, 2017, Hongsibsong et al, 2017, Sittitoon et al, 2017) and model organisms such as rodents (O’Brien and Wallace, 2004, Suzuki et al, 2008, Butenhoff et al, 2009, Butenhoff et al, 2012), fish (Ge et al, 2017), zebrafish (Bestman et al, 2015, Liu et al, 2015, Jia et al, 2016, Chen et al, 2016, Raftery et al, 2017), Caenorhabditis elegans ( C. elegans ) (Zhou et al, 2013, Liu et al, 2015, Wyatt et al, 2017), and cellular models (Zieminska et al, 2016, D’Mello et al, 2017, Yang et al, 2017). A large number of environmental factors including l-methyl-4phenyl-l, 2, 3, 6-tetra-hydropyridine (MPTP), and pesticides such as rotenone and paraquat are now widely-recognized mitochondrial toxins (Backer and Weinstein, 1980, Harmon and Sanborn, 1982, Nicklas et al, 1987, Youngster et al, 1987) and specifically, neurotoxins.…”