Assessing human exposures to pesticides.
Pesticide use is inevitably associated with chemical exposures that range from inferred nondetectable levels to easily measurable ones using sensitive, readily available analytical tools. Whether these exposures are of any biological significance is determined by duration, dose, and biological reactivity. The overwhelming majority of human exposures occur in a diverse chemical milieu of a nutritive substances and are of no known significance. Technologies that minimize human chemical exposures and maximize pesticide effectiveness are favored. The risk characterization process is ideally suited to assist decision makers concerning the protection of human health and evaluation of agricultural tools. It is the best means available to balance the review of pesticide impacts on health and agriculture. Regulators must be cautious to acknowledge the relative rather than absolute nature of the risk characterization process. Workplace biological monitoring must become more commonplace as a means to evaluate the chemical exposure potential of various work tasks and greater attention must be given to the biological validation of methods. Earlier needs for data to develop workplace hygiene strategies have been replaced in recent years by demands of the risk assessment process, which utilizes direct estimates of exposure and absorbed dose. Animal models, no matter how attractive, are not presently a substitute for human experience. Opportunities to gather more information on human experience associated with pesticide exposures must be more aggressively identified and pursued. Only a very small time lag should exist between identification of pesticide metabolites in rats and evaluation of metabolic similarities in humans. At the present levels of analytical sensitivity, most of our current uncertainty about the extent of worker exposure and patterns of metabolism between species can be at least clarified with the cooperation of persons who are exposed during normal day-to-day activities in the workplace. Only with better human data will the risk assessment process warrant greater reliance in decision making concerning our chemical exposures and human experience.
Krieger
R I
RI
Technical Assessment Systems, Inc., Washington, DC 20007.
Ross
J H
JH
Thongsinthusak
T
T
D004781:Environmental Exposure; D006801:Humans; D016273:Occupational Exposure; D010575:Pesticides; D012307:Risk Factors
D010575:Pesticides