Pesticide exposure and women's health

Abstract

Gender-sensitive research is needed to properly address the study of women's pesticide exposures and related adverse outcomes. A better understanding of potential gender-environment and sex-environment interactions related to pesticide exposure and health effects in women is needed.

The Reproductive Health and Liver Functions of Occupationally Exposed Female Pesticide Sprayers of Mango Plantations

“…Females involved in agricultural work reported a higher percentage of adverse outcomes of pregnancy (abortion, stillbirth and congenital anomalies) compared to females not engaged in agriculture, which agrees with other studies [22][23][24][25][26]. The intricate processes of the menstrual cycle, ovum production, fertilization, implantation, growth and development of the foetus may be particularly susceptible to low-dose exposures to endocrine disruptors.…”

Cancer incidence among laboratory workers in biomedical research and routine laboratories in Israel: Part II–nested case‐control study

“…Labreche and Goldberg [1997] hypothesized a plausible mechanism for breast cancer carcinogenicity of organic solvents through their hormonal properties. Another group of chemicals that can act through the same mechanism in increasing risk of breast cancer are a number of pesticides [Garcia, 2002]. Indeed, almost 5% of the breast cancer patients in our study reported an exposure to pesticides.…”

Pesticide knowledge, practice and attitude and how it affects the health of small-scale farmers in Uganda: A cross-sectional study

“…There has been expressed concern about female farmers spraying and the need for more data on gender differences in response to pesticides exposure [1,24]. Very few studies look at both genders in relation to pesticide exposure.…”

“…Former studies have shown that gender and age can modify the effect of number of times sprayed in relation to acute pesticide symptoms [13,19,24,25]. Therefore we tested for interactions with gender and age, with both the interaction term and the main effects in the analyses.…”