Occupational Medicine & Health Affairs
Open Access

Research Article

Self-reported Health Effects among Short and Long-term Pesticide Sprayers in Arusha, Northern Tanzania: A cross Sectional Study

¹Department of Veterinary Medicine and Public Health, Sokoine University of Agriculture, P. O. Box 3021, Morogoro, Tanzania.

²Department of Food Safety and Infection Biology, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, P. O. Box 8146, Oslo, Norway.

*Corresponding Author:

Manyilizu WB
Department of Veterinary Medicine and Public Health
Sokoine University of Agriculture, P. O. Box 3021, Morogoro, Tanzania
Fax: +25523260 4382
Tel: +255 767 567 914
E-mail: wmanyilizu@ gmail.com

Received date: November 04, 2015 Accepted date: November 30, 2015 Published date: December 10, 2015

Citation: Manyilizu WB, Mdegela RH, Kazwala R, Muller M, Lyche LJ, et al.(2015) Self-reported Health Effects among Short and Long-term Pesticide Sprayers in Arusha, Northern Tanzania: A cross Sectional Study. Occup Med Health Aff 3:223. doi: 10.4172/2329-6879.1000223

Copyright: © 2015 Manyilizu WB, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Background: The aim of the present study was to assess whether long-term exposure to pesticides is associated with adverse health effects in professional pesticide sprayers.

Methods: The study was conducted in Lake Eyasi Basin and Ngarenanyuki in Arusha region, during the dry season in September-October 2013. In a cross-sectional study, 97 short-term exposed men with at most three months as professional sprayers were compared with 60 long-term exposed men with experience of at least five years as professional sprayers. The study participants were aged 18-30 years, drawn from the same source population and interviewed using semi structured questionnaire. The questions focused on spraying procedures and on present and recurrent medical history including presence of selected six known pesticide induced health conditions.

Results: Organophosphates, carbamates, dithiocarbamates and pyrethroids were the most applied insecticides but also organochlorine fungicides and endosulfan were frequently applied. The majority of the sprayers reported unsafe pesticide use. Mean pesticide uses in litres, spray frequency per crop and per week were 637, and 1.3 respectively for about 270 days a year. Respiratory disease symptoms were the most frequently reported (46/157; 29.3%) followed by skin (27/157; 17.2%), and sight (24/157; 15.3%). When adjusted for age and other predictors, long-term exposed sprayers had significantly higher self-reported occurrences of peripheral neuropathy (OR=7.7, CI95%: 1.045-56.728, p=0.045) and respiratory disorders (OR=0.2, CI95%: 0.067-0.501, p=0.001) compared with short-term exposed. Furthermore, 10 sprayers, all long-term exposed reported poor libido and erection problems.

Conclusions: These findings document lack of safety knowledge, safe pesticide management and the implementation of protective measures as well as suggesting that long-term exposure to pesticides increase the risk of experience disease conditions compared to short-term exposure.

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