Work-related acute pesticide poisoning among farmers in southern Jiangsu province:a cross-sectional study

ObjectiveTo explore characteristics and the risk factors of work-related acute pesticide poisoning among farmers in southern part of Jiangsu province. MethodsStratified cluster sampling was used to investigate 1 380 famers from three rural areas in southern Jiangsu province with a questionnaire survey.The database was set up with Epi Data,and SPSS 16.0 software was used for multivariate unconditional logistic regression analyses. ResultsThe rate of work-related acute pesticide poisoning among the farmers was 8.6%.The factors of work-related acute pesticide poisoning included gender,age,without reading labels before pesticide use,using leaking knapsack during application,wiping the sweat by hand during application,body contact with the pesticide during application,and continuing pesticide application while in ill health status (P<0.05 for all).A dose-response relationship between the score of risk behaviors and work-related acute pesticide poisoning was observed. ConclusionThe rate of work-related acute pesticide poisoning is high and relates to risk behaviors among farmers in southern Jiangsu province.