Introduction to Pesticide Exposure Monitoring, Practical Guidance, and Perspectives

The use of pesticides has continued to grow since their introduction to modern agriculture, and more than 2 billion kilograms of these substances are used per year worldwide. Their main characteristic, that they impact living organisms, makes them a chemical hazard, and their use results in potential health risk, especially in agricultural workers. In agriculture, there is a notable instability of working conditions, disregard of good agricultural practices, and misuse of personal protective devices. Estimating the exposure and absorbed dose in this scenario is, therefore, extremely challenging. Pesticide field studies still represent the main way to collect real-life exposure data, to perform absorbed dose and risk assessment, and to verify the presence or absence of health effects from pesticide use. Here we present the main methods for pesticide exposure monitoring in real-life field conditions, with their advantages, disadvantages, and ways to improve them. Since most of the exposure in open field conditions comes from dermal exposure, OECD “patch” and “whole-body” methodologies are the two most widely used methods for exposure assessment. The main advantages of the “patch” methodology is that it preserves the real-life working conditions and allows the combined use of personal exposure and biological monitoring. The use of biological monitoring is limited in because of the lack of health-based occupational biological exposure limits. Ideally, a method to produce biological exposure limits for pesticide use in agriculture, similar to the ACGIH BEIs, could be developed taking into account skin as the main route of exposure in this setting.