Occupational Health & Safety

Biography

Biography: Muhammad Masood

Abstract

Pesticides are widely used in developing countries. There is paucity of literature about the unsafe use of pesticide in countries like Pakistan. We studied the knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding pesticides use and their health effects in an agricultural community of a rural district of Pakistan. A cross-sectional study was conducted using a pre-tested questionnaire. A sample of 778 farm workers aged ≥15 years old we interviewed. The average age of the studied population was 33.3 years with a low level of education (illiterate or <5 years of school, 65.7%). Majority of the farmers were cultivating their own land (99.6%) with average land size of 6.0 acres. About 96.5% of the interviewed farmers had personally worked with pesticides Over 85% of the farmers reported using the organophosphorous and methamidophos insecticide. A great majority 83.5% believed that pesticides are harmful for human health, but less than 13% used any form of personal protective equipment (PPE). The reasons for not using PPE were equipments were not easily available (23.4%), lack of knowledge about protective equipments (21%), cost of protective equipments (18%) and perception that exposure from pesticides can not cause any adverse health effect (8%). Almost all (99%) reported one or more toxic symptoms and 47.4% of them had sought some kind of medical treatment after pesticides exposure. Differences in toxicity symptoms between those with and without PPE use were unremarkable. About 97% of the farmers asked for training for proper and safe use of pesticides. These results indicate that unsafe use of pesticide in common. Special educational programs and legislation promoting the safe use of pesticides, and availability of personal protective equipments are necessary to decrease the pesticide exposure of farmers in Pakistan.