TY - JOUR
T1 - Characterizing exposures and neurobehavioral performance in Egyptian adolescent pesticide applicators
AU - Rohlman, Diane S.chertler
AU - Ismail, Ahmed A.
AU - Abdel-Rasoul, Gaafar
AU - Lasarev, Michael
AU - Hendy, Olfat
AU - Olson, James R.
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank the Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture and the adolescents for their participation, the Research Team at Menoufia University and Barbara McGarrigle for the urinary TCPy analytical work. The work was supported by the Fogarty International Center and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (R21 ES017223 and R01 ES022163).
PY - 2014/9/1
Y1 - 2014/9/1
N2 - Children and adolescents may have occupational exposure to pesticides. Although previous studies examining prenatal pesticide exposure have identified neurobehavioral deficits in children, there are limited studies examining the impact of occupational exposure in children. The objectives of this study are to estimate exposures to the organophosphorus pesticide, chlorpyrifos (CPF), by measuring urinary levels of 3,5,6-trichloro-2-pyridinol (TCPy), a specific CPF metabolite, and blood cholinesterase (ChE) activities and to characterize neurobehavioral performance in adolescents working as seasonal pesticide applicators and non-applicator controls. A neurobehavioral test battery, consisting of 14 tests, was used to assess a broad range of functions. Applicators performed worse than controls on the majority of tests. Principal component analysis was used to reduce the number of outcome variables and two components, focused on reasoning-short-term memory and attention-executive functioning, showed significant deficits in applicators compared to non-applicators. Elevated metabolite levels were found in the applicators compared to the non-applicators, confirming CPF exposure in the applicators. Although this study is limited by a small sample size, it provides preliminary evidence of moderate CPF exposures, decreased blood ChE in some applicators and decreased neurobehavioral performance in an adolescent working population.
AB - Children and adolescents may have occupational exposure to pesticides. Although previous studies examining prenatal pesticide exposure have identified neurobehavioral deficits in children, there are limited studies examining the impact of occupational exposure in children. The objectives of this study are to estimate exposures to the organophosphorus pesticide, chlorpyrifos (CPF), by measuring urinary levels of 3,5,6-trichloro-2-pyridinol (TCPy), a specific CPF metabolite, and blood cholinesterase (ChE) activities and to characterize neurobehavioral performance in adolescents working as seasonal pesticide applicators and non-applicator controls. A neurobehavioral test battery, consisting of 14 tests, was used to assess a broad range of functions. Applicators performed worse than controls on the majority of tests. Principal component analysis was used to reduce the number of outcome variables and two components, focused on reasoning-short-term memory and attention-executive functioning, showed significant deficits in applicators compared to non-applicators. Elevated metabolite levels were found in the applicators compared to the non-applicators, confirming CPF exposure in the applicators. Although this study is limited by a small sample size, it provides preliminary evidence of moderate CPF exposures, decreased blood ChE in some applicators and decreased neurobehavioral performance in an adolescent working population.
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U2 - 10.1007/s11011-014-9565-9
DO - 10.1007/s11011-014-9565-9
M3 - Article
C2 - 24833556
AN - SCOPUS:85027917938
SN - 0885-7490
VL - 29
SP - 845
EP - 855
JO - Metabolic brain disease
JF - Metabolic brain disease
IS - 3
ER -