Department of Environmental Health, Center for Public Health, Medical University, 1090 Vienna, Austria.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020 Feb 24;17(4):1435. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17041435.
Banana farming represents an important segment of agricultural production in Ecuador. The health of farmworkers might be compromised by the extensive use of pesticides in plantations applied under poorly regulated conditions. Due to an increased awareness of pesticide-related problems for nature, as well as for worker and consumer health, ecological farming has been established in some plantations of Ecuador. We set out to investigate the occupational health of workers in both conventional and ecological farming. Nuclear anomalies in buccal epithelial cells were used as short-term indicators for genotoxicity and a potentially increased cancer risk in the two groups of farmworkers. By application of the Buccal Micronucleus Cytome Assay (BMCA), we found the frequency of micronuclei in conventional pesticide using farmworkers significantly increased by 2.6-fold, and other nuclear anomalies significantly increased by 24% to 80% (except pyknosis with a non-significant increase of 11%) compared to the farmworkers on ecological plantations. These results demonstrate that ecological farming may provide an alternative to extensive pesticide use with significantly reduced indicators of cancer risk. In conventional farming, improvements in education and instruction regarding the safe handling of pesticides and protective equipment, as well as regulatory measures, are urgently needed.
香蕉种植是厄瓜多尔农业生产的重要组成部分。由于人们越来越意识到农药对自然、工人和消费者健康的相关问题，在一些厄瓜多尔的种植园中已经建立了生态农业。在本研究中，我们旨在调查常规农业和生态农业中工人的职业健康状况。我们使用口腔上皮细胞中的核异常作为短期遗传毒性指标，并评估这两种农业工人的潜在癌症风险。通过应用口腔微核细胞 Cytome 测定法（BMCA），我们发现，与生态种植园中工作的工人相比，使用常规农药的工人的微核频率显著增加了 2.6 倍，其他核异常增加了 24%至 80%（除了有丝分裂核固缩，其增加不显著，为 11%）。这些结果表明，生态农业可能为减少癌症风险提供了一种替代广泛使用农药的方法。在常规农业中，迫切需要改进关于安全处理农药和防护设备的教育和指导，并采取监管措施。
