Pesticide exposure and Diabetes

In a long-term study conducted by National Institutes of Health (NIH), it is found that licensed pesticide applicators who used chlorinated pesticides on more than 100 days in their lifetime were at greater risk of diabetes. This is one of the largest studies looking at the potential effects of pesticides on diabetes incidence in adults.

The researchers analyzed data from more than 30,000 licensed pesticide applicators participating in the Agricultural Health Study, a prospective study following the health history of thousands of pesticide applicators and their spouses in North Carolina and Iowa. The 31,787 applicators in this study included those who completed an enrollment survey about lifetime exposure levels, were free of diabetes during enrollment, and updated their medical records during a five-year follow-up phone interview. Among these, 1,171 reported a diagnosis of diabetes in the follow-up interview. The study participants were all non-Hispanic white men.

According to Dale Sandler, Ph.D., chief of the Epidemiology Branch at the NIEHS. "The results suggest that pesticides may be a contributing factor for diabetes along with known risk factors such as obesity, lack of exercise and having a family history of diabetes." Although the amount of diabetes explained by pesticides is small, these new findings may extend beyond the pesticide applicators to find further on this line. Some of the pesticides used by these workers are used by the general population as well, though the strength and formulation may vary.

Risks were greater when users of specific pesticides were compared with applicators who never applied that chemical. The strongest relationship was found for a chemical called trichlorfon, with an 85 percent increase in risk for frequent and infrequent users and nearly a 250 percent increase for those who used it more than 10 times. In this group, 8.5 percent reported a new diagnosis of diabetes compared with 3.4 percent of those who never used this chemical. Trichlorfon is an organophosphate insecticide classified as a general-use pesticide that is moderately toxic. Previously it was used to control cockroaches, crickets, bedbugs, fleas, flies and ticks, but currently being used mostly in turf applications, such as maintaining golf courses.

Diabetes is a world wide health issue when body fails to produce enough insulin to regulate blood sugar levels or when tissues stop responding to insulin. The cause of diabetes continues to be a mystery, although genetics and environmental factors such as obesity and lack of exercise appear to play roles. Moreover there may be some other factors also contributing to the onset of diabetes. However, this research alone is not sufficient to conclude the relationship between long exposure of pesticide and the diabetes, but surely leads to a more rigorous research to establish the fact.

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