Childhood pesticide poisoning in Zhejiang, China: a retrospective analysis from 2006 to 2015

Aziguli Yimaer,Xinglin Fang,Lifang Zhou,Guangdi Chen,Meibian Zhang,Wei Jiang

doi:10.1186/s12889-017-4505-3

Abstract

BackgroundPesticide poisoning in children has been a serious public health issue around the world, especially in the developing countries where agriculture is still one of the largest economic sectors. The purpose of this study was to analyze epidemiological characteristics of acute pesticide poisoning in children from Zhejiang province, China.MethodsThe pesticide poisoning cases for children were retrieved from Occupational Disease Surveillance and Reporting System, Zhejiang Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention, China. The incident cases, deaths, and fatality rate of child pesticide poisoning from 2006 through 2015 were calculated.ResultsDuring the study period, totally 2952 children were poisoned by pesticides, with 66 deaths, resulting in a fatality rate of 2.24%. Among them, there were 1607 male cases with 28 deaths, and 1345 female cases with 38 deaths. Most of the cases occurred in preschool children (1349) and adolescent age group (1269). Organophosphate and carbamate insecticides were the cause of most poisonings (1130), leading to 34 deaths. The highest fatality rate (3.13%) was due to poisoning by herbicides and fungicides, causing 14 deaths out of 448 cases. Poisoning occurred mostly in rural areas (78%). And most pesticide poisoning occurred in the summer (896) and fall (811), while fewest poisoning cases in the winter (483) but with the highest fatality rate (3.52%).ConclusionsThis study shows that pesticide poisoning of children is a major health problem in Zhejiang, suggesting preventive strategies should be conducted to control childhood pesticide poisoning.

Highlights

Pesticide poisoning in children has been a serious public health issue around the world, especially in the developing countries where agriculture is still one of the largest economic sectors
We described the overall epidemiological characteristics of acute childhood pesticide poisoning using the data from pesticide poisoning cases registered with the Occupational Disease Surveillance and Reporting System (ODSRS) in Zhejiang province, China
The annual cases and deaths remained steady so we combined all cases as study population to present the overall epidemiological characteristics of pesticide poisoning among children in Zhejiang province in ten years

Summary

Introduction

Pesticide poisoning in children has been a serious public health issue around the world, especially in the developing countries where agriculture is still one of the largest economic sectors. Different types of pesticides are applied to kill insects, rodents, fungi, weed and used to kill vectors of diseases in public health [2]. Children have rapid growing and developing organ systems, and the long-lasting exposure to pesticides during childhood have been associated with an increased risk of malignancy in adulthood [14, 15], respiratory symptoms [16], delays or impairments in language development [17, 18] and other neurodevelopmental outcomes [19,20,21]. It is vitally important to pay more attention to child pesticide poisoning

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