In the 1700s, Bernardino Ramazzini was among the first to describe respiratory disease among agricultural workers. Since then, farmers continue to have higher rates of respiratory illnesses, even as changes occur in occupational and environmental exposures on farms. While grain and animal exposures have been well studied for their role in agricultural lung diseases, pesticide exposures have not. Using the Agricultural Health Study, a prospective cohort study of approximately 89,000 licensed pesticide applicators and their spouses in Iowa and North Carolina, we are currently assessing the association of pesticides with respiratory outcomes, including wheeze, adult asthma, farmer's lung, and chronic bronchitis. At enrollment (1993-1997), 19% of farmers and 22% of commercial pesticide applicators reported wheeze in the previous year. Using logistic regression models adjusted for age, state, smoking status, and body mass index, we evaluated the association of 40 individual pesticides with wheeze within these two groups separately. In both groups, we observed strong evidence of an association of organophosphates with wheeze. For farmers, the organophosphates chlorpyrifos, malathion, and parathion were positively associated with wheeze; for the commercial applicators, the organophosphates chlorpyrifos, dichlorvos, and phorate were positively associated with wheeze. Chlorpyrifos was strongly associated with wheeze in a dose-dependent manner in both groups; use of chlorpyrifos for at least 20 days per year had an odds ratio of 1.48 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.00-2.19) for farmers and 1.96 (95% CI = 1.05-3.66) for commercial applicators. Our wheeze results are consistent with recent animal models that support a role for organophosphates and respiratory outcomes.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 5. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 20 April 2024.
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#9,644,462
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#4,727
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Outputs of similar age from Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
#79
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Altmetric has tracked 32,046,026 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 69th percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 13,825 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 8.9. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 65% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 114,431 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 63% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 224 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 64% of its contemporaries.
