Assessment of Children’s Pesticide Exposure Through a Visual Time Activity Diary

Mancozeb and maneb belong to a class of fungicides that are widely used in agriculture world-wide. In Costa Rican banana plantations, these fungicides are sprayed on banana plantations via light aircraft. Animal toxicity studies suggest that maneb and mancozeb can be carcinogenic but there are fe...

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Autor Principal: Pung, Karen
Formato: Reporte
Idioma: Inglés
Publicado: University of California 2016
Materias:
ISA
Acceso en línea: http://hdl.handle.net/11056/13144
Sumario: Mancozeb and maneb belong to a class of fungicides that are widely used in agriculture world-wide. In Costa Rican banana plantations, these fungicides are sprayed on banana plantations via light aircraft. Animal toxicity studies suggest that maneb and mancozeb can be carcinogenic but there are few human studies on exposure or health effects. The main metabolite of these fungicides is ethylenethiourea (ETU), which has also been shown to be carcinogenic in animals and has the potential to adversely affect thyroid function in humans. Physiological and behavioral reasons make children more vulnerable to pesticide exposures. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between child time activity patterns and levels of urinary ETU in children that live on banana plantations sprayed with mancozeb and maneb in Costa Rica. Children in the study (n = 37) were recruited from a small banana plantation community in the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. Urine samples (first morning void) were collected once daily for 7 days and children were also asked to complete a visual time activity diary for each of the 7 days. The time activity diary was a 4 inch x 6 inch card with pictures that the children wore around their necks during the day. It was pilot tested for one week and changes were made according to the children‟s reactions in preparation for the final study. The urine samples were frozen and mailed to Lund University in Sweden where they were analyzed for ETU levels in µg ETU/g creatinine, or µg/L ETU adjusted for density. Compared to levels of ETU reported in other studies, we found that children living in the banana plantation are highly exposed to ETU but this varies according to their activity patterns and whether aerial spraying occurred or not. For example, active children in this population had on average have 1.7 times higher levels of ETU in their morning urine after spraying days as compared to days where spraying did not occur. There is evidence to suggest that children have higher levels of ETU in their urine after spraying days if they spent 7 or more hours being active and outside. Implementation of the time activity diary was possible with this particular group of children but the accuracy of the responses should be validated with external observations of the children. The validation through external observations verifies the responses recorded by the children and is an important step when working with new groups of children.