Neurobehavioral and neurodevelopmental effects of pesticide exposures how this access benefits you. Your story matters

The association between pesticide exposure and neurobehavioral and neurodevelopmental effects is an area of increasing concern. This symposium brought together participants to explore the neurotoxic effects of pesticides across the lifespan. Endpoints examined included neurobehavioral, affective and neurodevelopmental outcomes amongst occupational (both adolescent many for researchers with the prevention of due to a of further and policy interventions for the the importance of examining long-term the early were assessed to address associations between pesticide poisoning, depressive symptoms, safety behaviors and injury in a Structural Equation Model. This work provides evidence that pesticide poisoning differentially affects the negative affect, somatic and retarded activity dimensions of depression, but not positive affect to the degree that health or financial problems do. The negative affect symptoms feeling depressed, fearful, sad and lonely and the retarded activity symptoms feeling unable to “get going” and that everything was an effort showed the most robust association with injury. Dr. London and colleagues presented their cross-sectional study of 810 workers on commercial grape farms in the Western Cape province of South Africa showing an association between reported past poisoning by pesticides and depression as measured on the GHQ, but no relationship with long term cumulative exposure. Structural Equation Modelling did not improve the exposure-effect characterization nor identify any relevant causal pathways. Whereas this study confirmed the association of affective disorders with past poisoning consistent with the literature, the contribution of long-term low-dose exposures to depression and suicidality remains uncertain. an association with suicide emerging from some of the cohort studies is equivocal. This paper reports on a preliminary analysis of data from a cross-sectional study in 2002 involving 817 adult farm workers recruited using single stage cluster sampling from 57 commercial grape farms in the Western Cape province of South Africa, principally to explore possible causal pathways between organophosphate exposure and depression, impulsivity, suicide ideation and eventually suicide. Participants were screened for depression, impulsivity and suicide ideation using the 28 – item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28) and the GHQ Depression Subscale; the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) Global Severity Index and BSI Depression Symptom Dimension; Barratt's Impulsivity Scale (BIS-11) and Beck's Scale for Suicidal Ideation (SSI). Exposure to OP pesticides was based on a detailed occupational history exploring high exposure job tasks in current and previous jobs, as well as a and history of past pesticide poisoning. Cumulative exposure was constructed from total years worked in agriculture as well as total years worked in tasks determined a priori to be high exposure activities. Confounders examined include medical and psychiatric history, alcohol consumption (measured as current versus not current, and in terms of CAGE score), demography (age, gender, socioeconomic status and farm type) and use of protective clothing.