Pesticide Toxicity Prevention in Farmer’s Community Movement

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Pesticide toxicity is a serious problem in poor and developing countries agricultural communities, including Indonesia.
 AIM: This study aims to design an effort of pesticide toxicity prevention.
 METHODS: This is participation action research in look, think, and action cycle of pesticide use process as a qualitative study. The participants were taken by purposive technique and data collected with focus group discussion, in-depth interviews, self-report, and observation. Data were analyzed by thematic analysis. All participants are the commitment farmers that able to prevent and resolve the pesticide toxicity problem. This research has ethical clearance with number 1608/I/SP/2019.
 RESULTS: The results found that the determinant factor of pesticide toxicity is a high risk such as direct contact, unusually personal protection used, bad behavior such as spraying while smoking, blowing pump hoses directly, poor personal hygiene, pesticide storage, and disposal action. Several factors that influence are ignorance of farmers about the toxic effects that cause chronic toxicity. To prevent pesticide toxicity, we found the eight principles of pesticide use that formulated based on the epidemiology prevention approach that meets the level of primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention. It called Community Movement in Toxic Resolve or Gerakan Masyarakat Petani Atasi Racun (GEMPAR) arranged as an effort to prevent toxicity, including recognizing the hazard of pesticide, completely personal protection used, paying attention to the wind direction and spraying route, store pesticides in a safe place, safely dispose of pesticides, personal hygiene, record, and report toxicity symptom, and going to organic farming.
 CONCLUSION: The effort of pesticide toxicity could prevent in successful by a community movement called GEMPAR that divides into eight principles of prevention action in pesticide used.

Evaluation of the use of Training and Awareness and the Promotion of the Safe use, Handling, Application, Storage, and Disposal of Pesticides as a Risk Reduction Strategy to Pesticide Exposure: A Case Study with Farmers in Ruby, Parika and Naamryck Farming Communities in Guyana

“…Nevertheless, Kilonzi et al [3] found that farmers 88% who participated in training and awareness exercises and were more likely to follow pesticide safety precautions. Mahyuni et al [16] also conclude that farmers must pay attention to the wind direction and spraying route when applying pesticides to prevent negative effects on themselves and other persons in the environment. The training and awareness sessions demonstrated some changes as all the respondents agreed that there should be no smoking when applying pesticides.…”

Development of Pesticide Sprayer Robot Prototype for Chilli Farm Agricultural Application

“…Manual sprayer also requires a lot of personnel and results in an inefficient and inconsistent pesticide coating, requiring the use of more pesticides. On the other hand, some researchers discovered that direct exposure to pesticides and a lack of knowledge about personal protective equipment usage (coveralls, protective boots, glasses/goggles, gloves, respirator and hat) when handling pesticides in open fields or greenhouse could cause symptoms such as headaches, skin irritation, nausea, itchy eyes, dizziness, fatigue, coughing, poor vision, stomach ache, excessive sweating, shortness of breath, vomiting and increased risk of acute and chronic health effects include cancers [4,5,6]. Researchers claimed that the farm workers who spray with small hoses are more likely to develop occupational pesticide behaviors and lung cancer than those who spray with large hoses [5].…”

The Prevention of Pesticide Risk Toxicity among Farmers on Food Estate Humbang Hasundutan

“…Through GEMPAR, farmers will always apply the principles of proper and correct pesticide use to trigger awareness to use safe pesticides. Increasing farmers' understanding directly through education can change farmers' behavior to be safer and healthier in pesticide use [6][7][8][9].…”