Pesticide Exposure and Depression among Male Private Pesticide Applicators in the Agricultural Health Study

Details

• Alternative Title:
  Environ Health Perspect
• Personal Author:
  Beard, John D. ; Umbach, David M. ; Hoppin, Jane A. ; Richards, Marie ; Alavanja, Michael C.R. ; Blair, Aaron ; Sandler, Dale P. ; Kamel, Freya
• Description:
  Pesticide exposure may be positively associated with depression. Few previous studies have considered the episodic nature of depression or examined individual pesticides.|We evaluated associations between pesticide exposure and depression among male private pesticide applicators in the Agricultural Health Study.|We analyzed data for 10 pesticide classes and 50 specific pesticides used by 21,208 applicators enrolled in 1993-1997 who completed a follow-up telephone interview in 2005-2010. We divided applicators who reported a physician diagnosis of depression (n = 1,702; 8%) into those who reported a previous diagnosis of depression at enrollment but not follow-up (n = 474; 28%), at both enrollment and follow-up (n = 540; 32%), and at follow-up but not enrollment (n = 688; 40%) and used polytomous logistic regression to estimate odds ratios (ORs) and 95% CIs. We used inverse probability weighting to adjust for potential confounders and to account for the exclusion of 3,315 applicators with missing covariate data and 24,619 who did not complete the follow-up interview.|After weighting for potential confounders, missing covariate data, and dropout, ever-use of two pesticide classes, fumigants and organochlorine insecticides, and seven individual pesticides-the fumigants aluminum phosphide and ethylene dibromide; the phenoxy herbicide (2,4,5-trichlorophenoxy)acetic acid (2,4,5-T); the organochlorine insecticide dieldrin; and the organophosphate insecticides diazinon, malathion, and parathion-were all positively associated with depression in each case group, with ORs between 1.1 and 1.9.|Our study supports a positive association between pesticide exposure and depression, including associations with several specific pesticides.
• Subjects:
  Research
• Source:
  Environ Health Perspect. 122(9):984-991.
• Pubmed ID:
  24906048
• Pubmed Central ID:
  PMC4154212
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Funding:
  T32ES007018/ES/NIEHS NIH HHS/United States ; T42OH00867302/OH/NIOSH CDC HHS/United States ; Z01 CP044008/CP/NCI NIH HHS/United States ; Z01 ES049030/ES/NIEHS NIH HHS/United States
• Volume:
  122
• Issue:
  9
• Collection(s):
  CDC Public Access
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:7ff0b26b14902fc713f217a7bf6b3e6be0b82d2d36911f3702ecd7dbc84b1f83
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/32265/cdc_32265_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 319.13 KB ]