Elsevier

Science of The Total Environment

Volume 575, 1 January 2017, Pages 525-535
Science of The Total Environment

Review
Exposure to pesticides and the associated human health effects

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2016.09.009Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Pesticides are designed to function with reasonable certainty and minimal risk to human health.

  • Pesticide exposure is however turned out to be linked with various diseases including cancer.

  • In light of the significance of pesticide pollution, the general aspects of pesticides are assessed.

  • The current state of knowledge regarding pesticide use and its detrimental impacts is described.

Abstract

Pesticides are used widely to control weeds and insect infestation in agricultural fields and various pests and disease carriers (e.g., mosquitoes, ticks, rats, and mice) in houses, offices, malls, and streets. As the modes of action for pesticides are not species-specific, concerns have been raised about environmental risks associated with their exposure through various routes (e.g., residues in food and drinking water). Although such hazards range from short-term (e.g., skin and eye irritation, headaches, dizziness, and nausea) to chronic impacts (e.g., cancer, asthma, and diabetes), their risks are difficult to elucidate due to the involvement of various factors (e.g., period and level of exposure, type of pesticide (regarding toxicity and persistence), and the environmental characteristics of the affected areas). There are no groups in the human population that are completely unexposed to pesticides while most diseases are multi-causal to add considerable complexity to public health assessments. Hence, development of eco-friendly pesticide alternatives (e.g., EcoSMART) and Integrated Pest Management (IPM) techniques is desirable to reduce the impacts of pesticides. This paper was hence organized to present a comprehensive review on pesticides with respect to their types, environmental distribution, routes of exposure, and health impacts.

Introduction

Pesticides are one of the few toxic substances released deliberately into the environment to kill living organisms (e.g., weeds (herbicides), insects (insecticides), fungus (fungicides), and rodents (rodenticides)). Although the term pesticide is often misunderstood to refer only to insecticides, it is also applicable to herbicides, fungicides, and various other substances used to control pests' (Matthews, 2006).

Agriculture is the largest consumer (around 85% of world production) of pesticides to chemically control various pests. Moreover, pesticides are also used in public health activities to control vector-borne diseases (e.g., malaria and dengue) and unwanted plants (e.g., grass and weeds) in ornamental landscaping, parks, and gardens. They are also useful in suppressing or avoiding the proliferation of insects, pests, bacteria, fungi, and algae in electrical equipment, refrigerators, paint, carpets, paper, cardboard, and food packaging materials (Gilden et al., 2010). However, unintended exposure to pesticides can be extremely hazardous to humans and other living organisms as they are designed to be poisonous (Sarwar, 2015). They may also be harmful to people who are exposed to pesticides through occupational (or home) use, eating foods or liquids containing pesticide residue, or inhalation (or contact) of pesticide-contaminated air (Pimentel et al., 2013). Even very low levels of exposure may have adverse health effects at early development (Damalas and Eleftherohorinos, 2011). The physical makeup, behavior, and physiology of children make them more susceptible to pesticides than adults (Mascarelli, 2013).

Pesticide exposure is linked with various diseases including cancer, hormone disruption, asthma, allergies, and hypersensitivity (Van Maele-Fabry et al., 2010). A line of evidence also exists for the negative impacts of pesticide exposure leading to birth defects, reduced birth weight, fetal death, etc. (Baldi et al., 2010, Meenakshi et al., 2012, Wickerham et al., 2012). On the basis of scientific evidence, the real, predicted, and perceived risks that pesticides pose to human health (occupational and consumer exposure) and the environment are fully justified. In light of the environmental significance of pesticide pollution and its impact, this review has been organized to describe the general aspects of pesticides with respect to classification, the status of pollution, the transfer route, and the impacts on human health. The objective of this review is to conduct a systematic review of published studies (since 1999 to 2016) with respect to the use of pesticides and their detrimental impacts on human health and ecological systems.

Section snippets

Methodology

A comprehensive literature search was conducted to accurately describe the impact of pesticide exposure and its health outcome. To this end, the following data sources were utilized: Medline, EMBASE, Science direct, PubMed, psycINFO, and papers cited in those database. In light of the extensiveness of the existing literature on this topic as well as the availability of many reviews, we focused on studies published mainly from 2010 to the present. No restrictions on study type were applied while

Types of pesticides

Pesticides can be classified by various criteria such as chemical classes, functional groups, mode of action, and toxicity (Garcia et al., 2012). Table 1 provides classification of pesticides based on different criteria. The active ingredients of most pesticides are either organic (contain carbon) or inorganic (copper sulfate, ferrous sulfate, copper, lime, sulfur, etc.) (Gunnell et al., 2007). The chemicals in organic pesticides tend to be more complex and less soluble in water than those of

Impact of pesticide use on the environment

As pesticides are designed to be toxic to particular groups of organisms, they can have considerable adverse environmental effects on other living creatures as well as diverse media including air, soil, or water (Aktar et al., 2009). The status of pesticide pollution in various environmental media (such as air, water, and soil) is summarized in Table 3.

Some pesticides (e.g., aldrin, chlordane, dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), dieldrin, endrin, heptachlor, and hexachlorobenzene) contain

Routes of pesticide exposure to human

Exposure to pesticides can occur directly from occupational, agricultural, and household use, while they can also be transferred indirectly through diet. Moreover, the general population may be exposed to pesticides due to their application on golf courses, around major roads, etc. The main routes of human exposure to pesticides are through the food chain, air, water, soil, flora, and fauna (Anderson and Meade, 2014). Pesticides are distributed throughout the human body through the bloodstream

Impacts of pesticide use on human health

Studies suggest that pesticides may be related to various diseases including cancers, leukemia, and asthma. The risk of health hazards due to pesticide exposure depends not only on how toxic the ingredients are but also on the level of exposure. In addition, certain people such as children, pregnant women, or aging populations may be more sensitive to the effects of pesticides than others. Fig. 3 displays the general types of health impact caused by pesticide exposure.

Conclusion

Although pesticides are developed to prevent, remove, or control harmful pests, concerns of the hazards of pesticides towards the environment and human health have been raised by many studies. There are indeed many inherent problems in conducting large-scale experiments to directly assess the causation of the human health problems associated with the use of pesticides. However, the statistical associations between exposure to certain pesticides and the incidence of some diseases are compelling

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge support from a National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology (MEST) (No. 2006-0093848) and from the Cooperative Research Program for Agriculture Science & Technology Development (Project title: Study on model development to control odor from hog barn, project No. PJ010521), Rural Development Administration, Republic of Korea.

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