Health Effects of Pesticides

目的：评估职业性和环境暴露与作为农药载体的农药和溶剂与不良生殖结局和神经功能损害之间的可能关系。成就：工人的健康研究数据收集已经完成，这是一个极其困难的项目。这是美国为数不多的使用流行病学方法收集数据而不使用方便样本的农场工人研究之一。这也是为数不多的关注低水平农药暴露对慢性健康影响和神经功能的研究之一。我们已经开始分析对氧磷酶样本，结果看起来令人鼓舞。PON1基因的多态性已经完成，合同实验室正在研究PON1基因。道格拉斯·贝尔博士正在与我们合作进行这些分析。清理农业健康研究收集的自我管理数据花了几年时间，但现在大部分已经完成，数据看起来可能很有趣。我们首先研究了未服用避孕药或未怀孕的20-40岁女性月经周期异常的一般危险因素。我们首先研究一般的医疗风险因素，我们需要识别这些因素，然后再研究杀虫剂是否可能扰乱月经周期功能。在我们最初看到的数据中，我们已经看到了体重、抑郁、高血压、糖尿病、年龄、香烟、甲状腺疾病和月经周期异常之间的强烈关系。

Aims: To evaluate the possible relationship between occupational and environmental exposure to pesticides and solvents that act as carriers for the pesticides and adverse reproductive outcomes and impaired neurologic function. Accomplishments: The worker's health study data collection is completed and this was an extremely difficult project to do. This is one of the few studies of farmworkers in the United States that has used epidemologic methods to gather the data and not used a convenience sample. It is also one of the few studies to look at chronic health effects of low level pesticide exposure and neurologic function. We have started to analyze the paraoxonase samples and the results look encouraging. PON1 polymorphisms have been completed and the contract laboratory is working on PON2. Dr. Douglas Bell is collaborating with us on these analyses. It took several years to clear the self-administered data collected by the Agricultural Health Study but now that is mostly done and the data look they may be interesting. We are first looking at general risk factors for menstrual cycle abnormalities among women age 20-40 who are not taking birth control pills or are not pregnant. We are looking at general medical risk factors first with the idea that we need to identify these before looking at whether pesticides might disrupt menstrual cycle function. We have seen strong relationships between body mass, depression, high blood pressure, diabetes, age, cigarettes, thyroid disease, and menstrual cycle abnormalities in our initial look at the data.