However, users find more in other countries who mentioned

these same insecticides were no more likely to list fatigue as a symptom for these products than for other products mentioned. Differences in refusal proportions between countries may also have explained some of the variability in the reported incidence of agrochemical incidents, but there was no indication from the local market research agencies who performed the fieldwork that this was a significant factor. Some analyses in this paper are based on spraying time as a surrogate for exposure time. This clearly underestimates the time that a user is exposed and incidents could occur during all phases from transport to spraying and after. However, there is no AZD1152 purchase reason to expect that the opportunity for exposure would be greatly different for the different pesticide sectors, although many of the insecticides were sprayed

in combination and the potential for exposure during mixing and measuring might be greater. In addition, over 80% of product-related incidents occurred while spraying (Matthews 2008). It is of concern that 1.2% of users reported an agrochemical incident that resulted in hospitalisation in the last 12 months and a further 5.8% reported an incident that required medical treatment. The incidence rate for incidents requiring medical treatment in the last 12 months was 17.8 per 100 users. However, nine countries in this survey (Brazil, China, Greece, Korea, Martinique Farnesyltransferase and Guadeloupe, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Taiwan) had an incidence rate for agrochemical incidents requiring medical treatment that was less than 5.8 per 100 users which equates to the 2006 all illness and accident rate for crop production workers in the USA of 5.8 per 200,000 h (US Bureau of Labor Statistics 2006). The limited information available on machinery and livestock-related incidents in this survey suggests that this would

also have been true for the majority of these countries if it had been possible to calculate a rate for all incidents requiring medical treatment. Wesseling et al. (2001) reported on acute pesticide-related illness amongst banana plantation workers in Costa Rica in 1996 and reported an overall rate of 2.6 per 100 workers per year for topical injuries and systemic poisonings. The incidence rate for incidents requiring hospital treatment amongst Costa Rican farmers in the present survey was similar at 3.2 per 100 (8.0 per 100 for see more medically treated incidents). However, only 3 of the 16 Costa Rican farmers in the present survey who were able to identify a product responsible for their incident cited paraquat as the cause of their agrochemical-related incident, whereas Wesseling et al. (2001) reported that paraquat was the pesticide most frequently associated with injuries, mostly skin and eye lesions.