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The use of pesticides in a Polish rural population and its effect on birth weight

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Abstract

Introduction

The risk of adverse reproductive outcomes related to pesticide exposure has been investigated in few studies; however, the results have not been consistent. The goal of the present study was to evaluate the influence of maternal residual exposure to pesticides on birth weight among women in an agricultural district in Central Poland.

Method

Subjects included 104 women who delivered a single, live infant between 1 January 1994 and 31 December 2000. Based on maternal reports, the type of farming (crops, orchards, non-farming jobs), involvement in field work and the trade names of pesticides used within last pregnancy were established. Birth weight for the most recent pregnancy was abstracted from the medical data of the local maternity unit.

Results

Mothers who reported involvement in field work had a similar pregnancy duration but delivered infants with a significantly higher birth weight than mothers not reporting such activities in the first or secondtrimester of pregnancy (P=0.04). However, after controlling for pregnancy duration and other factors affecting birth weight, we found that maternal exposure to synthetic pyrethroids in the first or second trimester was associated with a small but statistically significant decrease in birth weight (P=0.02).

Conclusions

We postulate that the observed effect of pyrethroids exposure was related to a slower pace of foetal development corresponding to the small-for-gestational-age (SGA) birth.

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences through the University of Iowa Environmental Health Sciences Research Center, NIEHS/NIH P30 ES05605" and by the Nofer Institute of Occupational Medicine (Research Project IMP. 10.9, "Exposure to pesticides in orchard farmers and pregnancy outcome").

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Epidemiology, Nofer Institute of Occupational Medicine, 8 Teresy St., 90-950, Lodz, Poland

    Wojciech Hanke & Wojciech Sobala

  2. Department of Epidemiology, College of Public Health, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, USA

    Paul Romitti

  3. Department of Occupational and Environmental Health, College of Public Health, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, USA

    Laurence Fuortes & Marek Mikulski

Authors
  1. Wojciech Hanke
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  2. Paul Romitti
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  3. Laurence Fuortes
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  4. Wojciech Sobala
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  5. Marek Mikulski
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Correspondence to Wojciech Hanke.

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Hanke, W., Romitti, P., Fuortes, L. et al. The use of pesticides in a Polish rural population and its effect on birth weight. Int Arch Occup Environ Health 76, 614–620 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00420-003-0471-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00420-003-0471-4

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