Occupational Allergic Hazards of Agricultural Chemicals and Its Prevention

摘要

The agricultural workers are exposed to various kinds and large amount of pesticides through their work. There have been many reports on the cases of agricultural workers developing health hazards due to pesticides. Among those hazards, respiratory and skin allergies, especially allergic contact dermatitis, are the most serious problems because of large numbers of suffering cases and difficulties to conduct the appropriative preventive control activities.But appropriate systemic and comprehensive control measures have been established. The etiology and prevention of allergies due to pesticides were studied. The main methods are the inhalation provocation test for the immediate-type allergy and the patch test and the guinea pig maximization test for the delayed-type allergy, and now the method of using cultured cells is developing. At the present time, a comprehensive-organized-consecutive control model is tried to be settled to detect the allergenic effect of the pesticides and to establish appropriate control measures for the workers, based on the results from our investigations. Our model consists of 6 steps and figured as a flow chart as follows: 1)Detecting suspected chemicals and agricultural work to develop allergy and allergic workers by field surveys; 2)Bibliographical references on allergenic effect of the suspected chemicals and work; 3)Confirmation of reported allergenic effect; 4)lf no report on allergenic effect of the suspected chemicals, experimental investigation is settled to confirm allergenic effect; 5)lf the allergenic effect is confirmed, experimental determination on dose-effect and dose-response of the suspected chemicals will be held; 6)Establishment and conduct of the control measures for agricultural workers and work conditions. Finally, it is proposed to found regional allergy and immunology centers to manage above control system effectively.