Assessment of residential exposures to agricultural pesticides: A scoping review

Abstract

The assessment of residential exposure to agricultural pesticides is a major issue for public health, regulatory and management purposes. In recent years, research into this field has developed considerably. The purpose of this scoping review is to provide an overview of scientific literature characterizing residential exposure to agricultural pesticides and to identify potential gaps in this research area. This work was conducted according to the JBI and PRISMA guidelines. Three databases were consulted. At least two experts selected the eligible studies. Our scoping review enabled us to identify 151 articles published between 1988 and 2019 dealing with the assessment of residential exposure to agricultural pesticides. Of these, 98 (64.9%) were epidemiological studies investigating possible links between pesticide exposure and the onset of adverse health effects, principally cancers and reproductive outcomes. They predominantly used Geographic Information Systems and sometimes surveys or interviews to calculate surrogate exposure metrics, the most common being the amounts of pesticides applied or the surface area of crops around the dwelling. Twenty-six (17.2%) were observational measurement studies conducted to quantify levels of pesticide exposure and identify their possible determinants. These studies assessed exposure by measuring pesticides in biological and environmental matrices, mostly in urines and house dust. Finally, we found only eight publications (5.3%) that quantified the risk to human health due to residential exposure for management purposes, in which exposure was mainly determined using probabilistic models. Pesticide exposure appears to be largely correlated with the spatial organization of agriculture activities in a territory. The determinants and routes of exposure remain to be explored to improve the conduct of epidemiological and risk assessment studies and to help prevent future exposures. Improvement could be expected from small-scale studies combining different methods of exposure assessment.

A Critical Scoping Review of Pesticide Exposure Biomonitoring Studies in Overhead Cultures

“…This is a major advantage as the extent of exposure by each route will obviously differ for residents as compared to operators or workers. Moreover, contrary to previous reviews by Dereumeaux et al and Teysseire et al [3,17,18], the focus of the present analysis is on biomonitoring not as an exploratory tool but as a regulatory tool. This includes addressing, for example, the question of observance of reference values.…”

“…In the present review, we therefore focused on biomonitoring studies which reliably assessed pesticide exposure by means of biomonitoring and, preferably, also quantified the systemic exposure. The latter requirement makes sure that the routes of exposure monitored comprised all three options, that is: (i) inhalative, (ii) oral and (iii) dermal uptake [17]. This is a major advantage as the extent of exposure by each route will obviously differ for residents as compared to operators or workers.…”

Integration of environment and nutrition in life cycle assessment of food Items: opportunities and challenges

“…Work is still needed to connect food production to specific additional human health impacts. Although the work described above captures pesticide residues in food and other drinking water impacts, methods should be developed to assess at least orders of magnitude of typical impacts of active pesticide ingredients on workers and on nearby populations (Ryberg et al, 2018;Teysseire et al, 2020), in a compatible way with other exposures in order to enable LCAs to analyse potential trade-offs.…”

Investigation of Relationships Between the Geospatial Distribution of Cancer Incidence and Estimated Pesticide Use in the U.S. West

“…This usage puts both rural and urban populations near these agricultural regions at an increased probability of agrichemical exposure. To date, most research regarding the relationship between pesticides and human cancer incidence has analyzed state‐level cohorts or specific case studies, very often focusing on laborers within the agricultural industry (Cantor et al., 1992), their families (Alavanja et al., 2004; Colt & Blair, 1998; Feychting et al., 2001), and residential exposure to agricultural pesticides (Teysseire et al., 2020). Data from the U.S.…”