Pesticides may up asthma in farm women
Dec 29, 2007
Allergy protection from growing up on farm cut in pesticide users.
Farm women who use pesticides are more likely than nonusers to develop allergic asthma as adults.
This effect is particularly strong for the 60% of farm women who grew up on a farm. People who grow up on farms have a reduced risk of allergies. Pesticide users have less of this protection,.
"Growing up on a farm is such a huge protective effect it's pretty hard to overwhelm it" A person said in a news release. "There is a difference in asthma prevalence between women who did and did not use pesticides, but whether it is causal or not remains to be seen".
Doctor’s team collected self-reported data from 25,814 farm women from Iowa and North Carolina. This data included detailed information on pesticide use and whether, as adults, they had doctor-diagnosed allergic or nonallergic asthma.
"It is likely that the association with pesticides is masked in the general population due to a higher baseline rate of asthma".
Use of any pesticide on the farm upped a woman's risk of allergic asthma by 46%, but did not increase risk of nonallergic asthma. Even so, the risk was not huge. Only 181 of 14,767 pesticide users reported allergic asthma. Ten of 31 analyzed pesticides were linked to allergic asthma, including two herbicides (2,4-D and glyphosate), seven insecticides (carbaryl, coumaphos, DDT, malathion, parathion, permethrin on animals, and phorate), and one fungicide (metalaxyl).
"Pesticides, particularly organophosphate insecticides, may increase asthma risk”.
However, just because there is a link between pesticides and allergic asthma doesn't necessarily mean pesticides cause asthma.
Source: webmd.com
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