Chuanjiang Tao, Chenghan Mei, Liying Zhang, Shuang Li, Yizhou Yan, Dongmei She, Xuehua An, Qiang Fu, Entang Pu, Lingmei Tao, Ran Liu, Hongjun Zhang, Xiuzhu Huang
Institute Control of Agrochemicals, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Beijing, 100125, PR China.
Guizhou Academy of Testing and Analysis, Guizhou Academy of Sciences, Guiyang, 550000, PR China.
Heliyon. 2024 Mar 31;10(7):e28756. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e28756. eCollection 2024 Apr 15.
Various health risk assessment models have been developed to evaluate occupational pesticide exposure in China. However, there has been limited investigation into the relationship between health risks and pesticide spraying in orchards. In this study, we analyzed pesticide exposure of applicators while spraying with a stretcher-mounted sprayer in orchards located in four different climatic regions. All garments' unit exposure (UE) demonstrated a right-skewed distribution, with gloves and shins accounting for the highest proportion of dermal pesticide exposure. We observed little difference in dermal and inhalation UE levels between apple and citrus orchards, except for pesticide exposure levels on wipes and faces. While 57% of the inhalation UE distribution variance was attributed to clustering and location effects, no significant differences were observed in dermal exposure levels. We evaluated the impact of different levels of protective clothing on pesticide exposure levels, according to applicators' working habits in China. Our findings revealed that improved levels of protection significantly reduced dermal exposure to pesticides, particularly when wearing gloves during spraying with a stretcher-mounted sprayer. Based on our empirical data, we utilized a simple random sampling model and an intercept-only lognormal mixed model to estimate dermal and inhalation exposure levels. The estimated dermal UE was accurate to within 3-fold with 95% confidence, and half of the estimated inhalation UE was acceptable according to the fold relative accuracy (fRA). Our established and verified statistics for dermal and inhalation UE can be utilized to evaluate the potential pesticide exposure to applicators during spraying in orchards with a stretcher-mounted sprayer.
中国已开发出多种健康风险评估模型，用于评估职业性农药暴露情况。然而，对于果园农药喷洒与健康风险之间的关系，相关调查却很有限。在本研究中，我们分析了在四个不同气候区域的果园中，使用担架式喷雾器喷洒农药时施药人员的农药暴露情况。所有衣物的单位暴露量（UE）呈现右偏态分布，其中手套和小腿部位的皮肤农药暴露占比最高。除了擦拭物和面部的农药暴露水平外，我们观察到苹果园和柑橘园在皮肤和吸入性UE水平上差异不大。虽然57%的吸入性UE分布方差归因于聚类和位置效应，但在皮肤暴露水平上未观察到显著差异。根据中国施药人员的工作习惯，我们评估了不同防护水平的防护服对农药暴露水平的影响。我们的研究结果表明，防护水平的提高显著降低了皮肤对农药的暴露，尤其是在使用担架式喷雾器喷洒农药时戴手套的情况下。基于我们的经验数据，我们使用简单随机抽样模型和仅含截距的对数正态混合模型来估计皮肤和吸入性暴露水平。估计的皮肤UE在95%置信度下精确到3倍以内，根据相对准确度倍数（fRA），估计的吸入性UE的一半是可接受的。我们建立并验证的皮肤和吸入性UE统计数据可用于评估使用担架式喷雾器在果园喷洒农药时施药人员潜在的农药暴露情况。
