Farmers Knowledge, Attitudes, Practices and Health Problems Associated with Pesticide Use in Rural Irrigation Villages, Southwest Ethiopia

Abstract

BackgroundIn Ethiopia, pesticides are widely used for a variety of purposes. The occurrence of contamination and poisoning for farmers is highly reported due to unsafe handling practices and their usage. We assessed knowledge, attitudes and experiences of previous pesticide exposure, and related health problems among farmers who use irrigation in Jimma Zone, Southwest Ethiopia.MethodsA community based cross-sectional study was conducted among farmers living in the zone. Respondents were 796 irrigation farmers from 20 kebeles (lowest administration unit) in Jimma Zone. Data were collected using a pretested and structured questionnaire via face-to-face interviews. Both descriptive and inferential statistics analysis were performed. A binary logistic regression was used to identify factors associated with attitudes of farmers towards the safe use of pesticides at P value of ≤ 0.05 in the final model.ResultsAmong the participants, 54.4% (95%CI, 50.7–58%) knew at least one pesticide control method and 53.7% had positive attitudes towards safe use of pesticide. The mean score of attitudes was found to be 3.9(±0.4). Knowledge including each of the following: the names of the pesticides (AOR, 0.41; 95%CI, 0.25–0.67), methods of pest control and the use of gloves during pesticide exposure (AOR, 1.52; 95%CI, 1.07–2.16) was found to be independent predictor of the farmers’ attitudes about safe use of pesticides. Past exposure of pesticide was reported by 89.6% of farmers. Participants reported ingestion (88.9%) and inhalation (90.4%) as possible mechanisms of pesticide exposure. Nearly 42% of farmers had never used any personal protective equipment (PPE) to protect themselves against pesticide exposure. Farmers reported several health complications, which were perceived as complications of pesticide exposure, including: headache, nausea and vomiting, skin rash and irritation and abdominal pain.ConclusionsThe study exposed the existence of high probability of pesticide exposure, the low safe use of pesticide and the low use of PPE. However, but farmers had positive attitudes towards safe use of pesticides. These findings appeal for the development of effective public health strategies to improve farmers’ awareness and safe use of PPE. In addition, there is a need to inform farmers about integrated pest management to prevent severe health complications, which may occur as a result of unsafe and inappropriate use of pesticides.

Farmer's Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices, and their Exposure to Pesticide Residues after Application on the Vegetable and Fruit Crops. Case Study: North of Delta, Egypt

“…The majority of the farmers acknowledged that pesticides were harmful to their health and the environment. Also, farmer's knowledge for pesticide hazards was high, while the reported safety measures were poor [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25].…”

Reliability and factorial validity of a questionnaire to assess organophosphate pesticide exposure to agricultural workers in Maule, Chile

“…The resulting contents from this first version coincide with other validated instruments, which aim to assess exposure to pesticides related to the use of PPE and exposure conditions for applicators and nonapplicators (Engel et al 2001;Lekei et al 2014;Gesesew et al 2016). However, this questionnaire has the advantage of including specific items to evaluate OP exposure mainly related to occupational conditions of workers.…”

“…Within these factors, it was found relevant to leave the items comprising a moderate correlation with the total (Table 3), considering that if the element was removed, the change in Cronbach's alpha of each factor was not significant. Also, the content evaluated for those items may provide relevant background information for evaluating exposure to OPs, such as the questions of the factors 3 and 4, given that there are other exposure pathways which are related to the variables of occupational exposure to OP (Lekei et al 2014;Muñoz-Quezada et al 2016a;Corral et al 2017), especially for applicators (Gesesew et al 2016).…”

“…pesticides too, in order to avoid confusing the respondent among different substances types and classifications. Gesesew et al (2016) and Corral et al (2017) showed in their studies that the use of questionnaires on knowledge and attitudes regarding exposure to pesticides allows to assess the behaviors associated with self-care practices, the beliefs about the effects on health and workers' risk perception, providing useful inputs to the authorities for decision-making about workers' training and vigilance strategies of the terrestrial application of pesticides.Compared to these valuable previous efforts, our study provides more specific questions about the use of PPE, the exposure of seasonal workers and pesticide applicators, the exposure at home and the conditions of hygiene at work. Also, we included a series of questions that aim to identify acute and chronic symptoms of exposure.…”

“…For follow-up or monitoring studies, occupational exposure to OPs and health conditions are often evaluated through questionnaires or review of clinical symptoms (Engel et al 2001;Samanic et al 2005). Recent studies have employed questionnaires to investigate pesticide exposure, use of personal protective equipment (PPE) and health problems; however, few studies have examined reliability and validity of these instruments (Samanic et al 2005;Beseler and Stallones 2006;Lekei et al 2014;Potts et al 2014;Damalas and Abdollahzadeh 2016;Gesesew et al 2016).…”