Due to uncontrolled use for several decades, dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), probably the best known and most useful insecticide in the world, has damaged wildlife and might have negative effects on human health. This review gives a brief history of the use of DDT in various countries and presents the results of epidemiologic and experimental studies of carcinogenesis. Even though its use has been prohibited in most countries for ecologic considerations, mainly because of its negative impact on wildlife, it is still used in some developing countries for essential public health purposes, and it is still produced for export in at least three countries. Due to its stability and its capacity to accumulate in adipose tissue, it is found in human tissues, and there is now not a single living organism on the planet that does not contain DDT. The possible contribution of DDT to increasing the risks for cancers at various sites and its possible role as an endocrine disruptor deserve further investigation. Although there is convincing experimental evidence for the carcinogenicity of DDT and of its main metabolites DDE and DDD, epidemiologic studies have provided contrasting or inconclusive, although prevailingly negative, results. The presence and persistence of DDT and its metabolites worldwide are still problems of great relevance to public health. Efficient pesticides that do not have the negative properties of DDT, together with the development of alternative methods to fight malaria, should be sought with the goal of completely banning DDT.

The following groups of pesticides are considered in this review by supposed mechanisms of their carcinogenicity: hepatocarcinogenic pesticides, pesticides - peroxisome proliferators, pesticides as endocrine disruptors, goitrogenic pesticides, pesticides producing sustained cell proliferation and some others. With very rare exceptions, pesticides do not react with DNA directly and the mechanisms of their carcinogenicity are, in general, similar to those of other nongenotoxic (epigenetic) carcinogens, namely: promotion of spontaneous initiation, cytotoxicity with sustained cell proliferation, oxidative stress, formation of activated receptors and some others. Genotoxicity of pesticides varies from its complete absence (propiconazol as an example) to a very pronounced one (captafol) with remaining compounds in between. These two compounds demonstrate full correlation between genotoxicity and carcinogenicity (or their absence). Many pesticides give positive results in some tests for genotoxicity but these results are frequently controversial, not readily reproducible, or obtained only at toxic dose levels. The weak genotoxicity of the majority of pesticides is easily explainable by their rather severe testing before their introduction into practical use. The above mechanisms are threshold-based and therefore pesticides are regulated through NOEL/safety factor. There exist examples of lack of correlation between genotoxicity and carcinogenicity: some pesticides are genotoxic (although not strongly) but noncarcinogenic, others are considered as nongenotoxic but are strongly carcinogenic (chlorothalonil, acetochlor). The general scheme of the promoters' effect is presented in which an important role is attributed to the cytochrome P-450 induction (some pesticides are the cytochrome P-450 inducers), formation of reactive oxygen species and peroxitome proliferation. Teratogenesis Carcinog. Mutagen. 20:229-240, 2000.

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There is implemented the development of the model of assessment of the risk from working conditions/ This model allows to solve the problem of the safe use of pesticides in agricultural production of the Russian Federation. The importance of the parallel assessment of the risk for the specific factor of the external exposure to operators (SF ex.) and absorbed dose (SF int.) is presented. Studies of more than 500 pesticides have shown the following correlation of the SF ex. and SF int.: in 8.3-37.5% cases SF ex. and SF int. were practically equal, in 44.8-85.7% cases SF ex. was higher up to by 10 times and in 8.3-26.3% cases SF int. is higher up to by 30 times. Introduction of the new evaluation criterion SF int. increases reliability of the risk assessment.

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