Medical surveillance, pesticide

DBCP). Employees must meet training requirements when they work in operations where DBCP is stored, transported, distributed or sold in intact containers that are sealed to prevent exposures to DBCP vapors or liquid, but they may be exempt from some of the other requirements of the standard. This standard does not apply to employees who are exposed solely from the application and use of DBCP as a pesticide. Also, this standard incorporates by reference 1910.134, which has additional training requirements for employees who wear respirators. Also, any person who cleans or launders contaminated protective clothing is to be informed of the hazards of exposure to DBCP. In addition, the employer must provide specified information to the physician who is conducting medical surveillance, and the employee is to receive a copy of the physician s written opinion. 

Acute and chronic arsenic intoxications, excepting suicides or accidents, have become rare in Western countries. Air controlling of all dangerous parts in factories and regular medical surveillance of workers has reduced the risk of chronic arsenic poisoning to near zero. Pesticides, especially ant killers taken by children, were the predominant cause of As intoxication in the USA in recent years [12,37-39,49,50]. 

There is a growing need to better characterize the health risk related to occupational and environmental exposure to pesticides. Risk characterization is a basic step in the assessment and management of the health risks related to chemicals (Tordoir and Maroni, 1994). Evaluation of exposure, which may be performed through environmental and biological monitoring, is a fundamental component of risk assessment. Biomarkers are useful tools that may be used in risk assessment to confirm exposure or to quantify it by estimating the internal dose. Besides their use in risk assessment, biomarkers also represent a fundamental tool to improve the effectiveness of medical and epidemiological surveillance. 

The government encourages measurement of the pesticide and other chemical contamination of soil, water and food that has been a much-researched subject in India since the 1970s. Several national and international agencies carry out regular research on toxic chemicals, especially on pesticides in India. In 1986, The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) began a project on surveillance of food contaminants in India and found that 51% of the food items tested were contaminated with various pesticides and 20% of them had pesticide levels above the... 

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