Poisonings, pesticide

Despite the use of 2.5 million tons of pesticide worldwide, approximately 35% of potential crop production is lost to pests. An additional 20% is lost to pests that attack the food post-harvest. Thus, nearly one-half of all potential world food supply is lost to pests despite human efforts to prevent this loss. Pesticides, in addition to saving about 10% of world food supply, cause serious environmental and public health problems. These problems include human pesticide poisonings fish and bird kills destruction of beneficial natural enemies pesticide resistance contamination of food and water with pesticide residues and inadvertent destruction of some crops. 

Available records Indicate that worldwide each year, there are about 1,000,000 accidental human poisonings and about 20,000 human deaths (50). In the U.S. there are 20,000 reported human pesticide poisonings and about 35 reported fatalities each year (Blondell,... 

J., U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, personal communication, 1989). The United States has fewer recorded pesticide poisonings per unit weight of applied pesticide than in other countries. For Instance, the U.S. has only about l/50th the number of world poisonings but uses about one-fifth of all the pesticide used in the world. Thus, it appears that the U.S. program to regulate the use of pesticides is more effective than in most parts of the world. 

The controls were patients who had undergone appendicitis or hernia surgery, and were matched for sex, age, and socioeconomic status with a larger set of 31 pesticide poisoning eases, of whieh the methyl parathion eases were a subset. Limitations of this study include the small number of methyl parathion eases, and the use of appendieitis and other surgery patients as eontrols. 

EPA. 1989b. Recognition and management of pesticide poisonings. 4th ed. Washington, DC U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Health Effects Division. Office of Pesticide Programs. EPA 540/9-88-001. 

Reich GA, Gallaher GL, Wiseman JS. 1968. Characteristics of pesticide poisoning in south Texas. 

Garcia-Repetto R, Soria ML, Gimenez MP, et al. 1998. Deaths from pesticide poisoning in Spain from 1991 to 1996. Vet Hum Toxicol 40(3) 166-168. 

Morrison G, Durham WF 1971) Analytical diagnosis of pesticide poisoning. Collection, storage, and shipment of biological samples. J Am Med Assoc 216 298-300. 

The official Soviet point of view on the safety of pesticide use acknowledged that pesticide poisoning took place only when safety techniques, instructions and standards were ignored. From the 1970s, scientific articles stopped quoting absolute numbers of sufferers, and replaced them with percentages ... 

In the 25 years up to 1970, there were 42,500 incidents of acute pesticide poisoning in 69 different countries in the USSR for 10 years during that period, there were 8,100 incidents [A54]. If we recalculate per capita, there was one incident per 200,000 people worldwide, with one incident per 20,000 in the USSR in other words there were ten times more incidents in the USSR than in the rest of the world. Unlike other countries where the majority of pesticide poisoning was due to OCPs and OPPs, in the USSR an overwhelming number of incidents were due to OMPs (organomercuiy pesticides) (Table 3.1). 

Table 3.1. Distribution of acute pesticide poisoning in the USSR in the 1960s by degree of danger [54]...

The importance of the last case is easy to see in the example of two regions where pesticides were used especially intensively. In the 1970s in Tajikistan, only 23.9% of the population suffering from acute pesticide poisoning was... 

Table 3.2. Data on pesticide poisoning in the USSR from 1956-75 [78]...

Pesticide poisoning incidents from 1959-68 in Uzbekistan were analyzed. The acute poisoning analysis permitted us to divide sufferers into three groups the first indudes workers who have direct contact with pestiddes the second includes collective farm workers who worked in the fields shortly after the crops were treated and the third includes people who suffered the effects of pestiddes introduced into their bodies through water, food, and inhalation. 

Acute and chronic pesticide poisoning (the latter being much more frequent) has serious effects during pregnancy and birth. 

The reasons for mercury pesticide poisoning deserve especially close analysis. OMPs were detected not only in cereals where they could be found since they were used, but also in fish products. We must keep in mind that according to existing public health standards, in principle, granosan (active ingredient ethyl mercury chloride), and especially OMPs (in the mixtures mercury benzol and mercury hexane, the active ingredient is also ethyl mercury chloride), presence in food products is banned [5]. Therefore, the notation exceeds MPL is not appropriate. 

A predator eating a victim that has accumulated pesticides in its tissues may die from secondary pesticide poisoning. For example, newts died when they ate tadpoles poisoned by OCPs. Frogs may die as a result of eating poisoned caterpillars [85]. 

Mammals may die from pesticide poisoning not immediately, but many months later, when they more actively use their fat deposits, for example, when waking up after hibernating they are then poisoned by deposits of toxic substances in their fat [3,6]. 

Sidorenko Ye.N. Otravlyeniye pestitsidami (Pesticide Poisoning). Kiev Vishcha shkola, 1978. 

Makovskaya Ye.I. Patalogichiskaya anatomiya otravleniya yadokhimikatami (The Pathological Anatomy of Pesticide Poisoning). Moscow Meditsina, 1967. 347 pp. 

Pol chenko V.I. Prichino-sledstvenniy analiz otravlyeniy pestitsidami i problemy ikh profilaktiki (A Cause and Effect Analysis of Pesticide Poisoning and Problems of Its Prevention) Abstract of Dis.. ..Doctor of Medical Sciences. Kiev, 1972. 38 pp. 

Leighton, F.A., G.A. Wobeser, and H.G. Whitney. 1987. Pesticide poisoning in gulls. Canad. Veterin. Jour. 28 108-109. 

Center for Disease Control (CDC). 1980. Pesticide poisoning in an infant. CDC, Mortal. Morbid. 29 254-255. 

Lox, C.D. 1983. Effects of acute pesticide poisoning on blood clotting in the rat. Ecotoxicol. Environ. Safety 7 451-454. 

My family was supportive. We came from an area where there are a lot of toxic chemicals and people get pesticide poisoning. We also lived in an area where you had somebody come in and dowse if you had water problems. Dowsing was a normal thing, not crazy. 

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