Pesticide Exposure Pathways for Farmworker Children

This project is aimed at better understanding how children living in agricultural environments are exposed to pesticides, and how such exposures can be prevented or reduced. Since 1991 our group has investigated pesticide expsoures among children of agricultural families in Washington state, focusing on exposure to organophosphate insecticides. We have demonstrated in these studies that the residential environments of agricultural families have higher pesticide residues than do other homes in this region. We have also found that children living in these residential environments have elevated levels of pesticide metabolites in their urine. We need to better understand how these children are being exposed in order to develop recomendations for exposure prevention or reduction. The current project will characterize pesticide exposure pathways for children of farmworkers. A complementary project is also underway by the UW-Child Health Center to develop and implement a community-wide intervention to reduce the transfer of pesticides from the workplace to the home (take home pathway).