GIS-based approaches to assess environmental exposure to agricultural pesticides in health: Review of the literature

摘要

Background: Exposure to agricultural pesticides has been shown to impact human health and is associated with several diseases, e.g. cancer. Assessment, in particular retrospectively, is difficult due to lack of exposure data at the individual level and limits of classical epidemiological methods (recall bias). Geographic Information Systems (GIS) offer the possibility of analysing exposure at a fine scale, reducing misclassification and thus improving health risk estimates. Aims: To analyze GIS methods for pesticides exposure assessment and to highlight differences and overlaps in data and techniques across peer-reviewed published studies. Methods: We conducted a systematic literature review combining terms related to GIS, exposure, pesticides and health, producing 1161 papers published 1980 to 2013. Based on review of title and abstract, we selected 50 papers using GIS to assess agricultural pesticide exposure in the general population, including epidemiological and environmental health studies. We analysed the 50 studies in terms of design, data sources and analytical methods. Results: Most were epidemiology studies conducted in California where pesticide use reporting (PUR) is mandatory. Studies were mostly case-control design regarding cancer and neurological disorders. Populations were derived from disease registries or other recruitment, resulting in high variation in geocoding accuracy. Most studies included land use and pesticide data varying in geographic resolution, and from PUR (1 mi2) to field level applications. Most used 500m circular buffers to define pesticide source area. Methodological studies using larger buffers found improved prediction in metric validation. Use of meteorological and topographic data was rare and heterogeneous. Conclusion: GIS improves assessment of agricultural pesticides exposure in the general population when accurate geocoding, source location, and metric design are used and particularly with mandatory reporting (PUR).