14 Clinical Trials for Various Conditions
To reduce the risk of adverse health problems associated with chronic exposure to pesticides, a randomized control study will evaluate a nurse-led integrated pest management (IPM) intervention in 88 child care centers serving socio-economically and ethnically diverse preschool-age children in four California counties. Positive changes in IPM knowledge, policies, practices, pests, and pesticide exposure will be assessed.
In the Lake Apopka, Florida area for over 50 years starting in the 1940s, organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) including 4,4'-dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), dieldrin, chlordane, toxaphene and more recently methoxychlor were sprayed on farmlands in order to control pests and to improve crop harvests. For most of those years, the farmworkers were exposed to the pesticides as part of their work. Because of their lipophilic (fat soluble) nature, these organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) are readily taken up into the body and not readily eliminated. Therefore, they can be detected in exposed individuals for many years after the exposure. There is some evidence that certain OCPs can cause or exacerbate medical problems in sensitive individuals. For example, exposure to some OCPs has been associated with development of Parkinsonism. Exposure to other OCPs has been associated with development of lupus erythematosus, an auto-immune disease. Other adverse effects of exposure to OCPs are endocrine disruption because some OCPs mimic estrogens and others mimic androgens, or may have mixed interactions with steroid receptors. In this research study the investigators aim is to test the blood from former farmworkers during the 1940s through the late 1970s who reside in the Lake Apopka area for OCPs and for the auto-antibodies. In addition, questionnaires will provide insight on their health status and health concerns.
Background: - Multiple myeloma (MM), a type of cancer that affects the white blood cells, is often preceded by a precancerous disorder known as monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS). Farmers and other agricultural workers have a higher risk of developing MGUS and MM, possibly because of their exposure to certain pesticides. Researchers are interested in studying biological specimens taken from participants in the Agricultural Health Study - specifically, pesticide applicators at least 50 years of age who do not have cancer- to better understand the development of MGUS and MM. Objectives: * To collect biological specimens from Agricultural Health Study participants for further research. * To examine the relationship between pesticide exposure and MGUS/MM. Eligibility: - Male pesticide applicators who are over 50 years of age, cancer-free, and participating in the Agricultural Health Study. Design: * Two groups of participants will complete the study: a general group and a smaller group of individuals who have been exposed to the pesticide diazinon. * All participants will receive an initial contact letter with information about the study, followed by a phone call to administer a screening questionnaire and arrange a home visit from a researcher within the next month. * Participants will receive by mail a urine specimen kit that will be collected at the home visit. * During the home visit, a study researcher will take blood samples and collect the urine sample, and will administer another questionnaire. * Participants in the group exposed to diazinon will have three home visits for the study: (1) prior to pesticide exposure, (2) the day after participants stop using diazinon, and (3) about 21 days after the second visit. The first visit will take place in the off-season from January to March; the second and third visits will be conducted between April and August. * No treatment will be provided as part of this study.
We propose to conduct a study to increase our understanding of farming practices and of the potential for previous exposure to DDT in North Carolina African American male agricultural workers, a group especially likely to have had high DDT exposure. Because of potentially widespread DDT exposure from agricultural activities, African American farmers and farm workers may be uniquely at risk for any associated health effects. However, little is known about levels of pesticide exposure in African American farming populations. Three hundred and eighty-nine African American men who are current or former farmers or farm workers will be asked to participate in the study. These men are members of the Supplemental Minority Cohort of the NCI/NIEHS/EPA Agricultural Health Study (AHS). The AHS is a prospective study of the potential health effects associated with agricultural exposures. Men in the supplemental cohort were recruited in 1996. At that time, they completed an enrollment questionnaire that focused on lifetime agricultural exposures, demographics, lifestyle factors and health. In this new study, a follow-up questionnaire will be administered by telephone by a trained interviewer to all men. Following the interview, the participant will be asked to donate a blood specimen, to have anthropometric indices (e.g., height, weight, waist and hip circumference, etc.) measured, and to have a top- and side view Polaroid photograph of their head taken during one visit to a central community location, such as the local church or health clinic. We will quantitatively document serum p,p'-DDE levels, correlate these with self-reported farming activities and DDT exposure, and describe the health status of these men. We will also correlate serum p,p'-DDE levels and androgen concentrations, since p,p'-DDE is thought to be a potent androgen receptor antagonist. This exploration of the potential link between levels is important because the demonstration of any subclinical physiological effects of p,p'-DDE would increase the plausibility of a wide range of health effects that have been postulated to be associated with the endogenous endocrine environment and the so-called endocrine disrupters. In addition, we will evaluate the relationship between several important physiological parameters which can be easily and accurately measured in serum, and physical characteristics including hair patterning and distribution of body fat in these African American men.
Exposure and health study of pesticide and allergen exposures to pregnant women and children. Intervention study is planned after assessment is completed.
This is a community-based participatory research program focusing on pesticide contamination in migrant farmworker families.
This project is aimed at better understanding how children living in agricultural environments are exposed to pesticides, and how such exposures can be prevented or reduced. The current project will characterize pesticide exposure pathways for children of farmworkers.
Child Care Health Consultants will provide an integrated pest management (IPM) intervention for \~30 family child care home directors. The intervention will include an educational component, collecting carpet dust samples, reporting back the pesticides identified in the carpet, and 7-monthly consultations to identify ways to reduce their exposure to pesticides and lower their long term health risks.
Previous studies have estabished pesticide exposure as a possible risk factor for childhood cancer. The Agricultural Health Study (AHS), a prospective cohort study of pesticide exposure among 51,000 pesticide applicators in North Carolina and Iowa, provides an opportunity to study childhood cancer incidence and mortality among the children of pesticide applicators. Name and dates of birth for 21,985 children were previously provided by adult participants in the AHS. The current study seeks to identify cases of cancer among these children through record linkage to state cancer and death registries. Cancer incidence and mortality within the cohort will be compared with national data through standardized incidence and mortality ratios. A limited case-cohort comparison of pesticide exposures will also be performed. Approximately 44 cases of childhood cancer are expected to be identified. No follow-up or contact with cases is anticipated. It is anticipated that the study results will provide insight into the relationship of pesticide and other farm exposures to the pathogenesis of childhood cancer.
The "Agricultural Health Study" (AHS) is a collaborative effort between the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health are providing support for a limited exposure assessment effort. Initial data collection on a prospective cohort of 89,658 study subjects has been completed as of December 1997. Participants completed questionnaires that included items on pesticides used, other agricultural exposures, and work practices that modify exposure as well as on other activities that may affect either exposure or disease risks (e.g., diet, exercise, alcohol consumption, medical conditions, family history of cancer, other occupations and smoking history). Phase II of the study (1998-2003) updated information on occupational exposures, diet, work practices and medical history by means of a computer assisted telephone interview. We also collected buccal cells on sample of 34,000 study participants to assess the effect of inheritable polymorphisms and the interaction of environment and genomic predisposition. The stimulus for this prospective investigation comes from the growing evidence that, despite a low mortality overall, farmers experience an excess of several cancers. These excesses have been observed in retrospective epidemiological studies among agricultural workers in several countries. Excess cancers are observed for the lymphatic and hematopoietic system, connective tissue, skin, brain, prostate, stomach and lips. Several of these tumors (brain, NHL, multiple myeloma, and prostate) are also increasing in the general population in many of these countries. This suggests a common set of exposures may explain the high rates in farmers and rising rates in the general population. Farmers, their families, and other pest control workers may have contact with a variety of potentially hazardous substances including pesticides, solvents, fuels and oils, engine exhaust, dust and zoonotic viruses and other microbes. Our cohort study includes all registered pesticide applicators in Iowa and North Carolina and the spouse of applicators who are farmers. The health effects of pesticide use are the primary focus of the study. The influence of other farm exposures are also being evaluated. The focus of the phase II follow-up period (2004-2008) is to update exposure information and health histories by means of a computer assisted interview and also following the cohort to determine disease incidence and mortality. The cohort is being followed through the cancer registries within Iowa and North Carolina, the Social Security Administration database, state vital statistics offices, National Death Index, and various in-state databases, such as the listing of registered pesticide applicators. Individuals who enrolled into the study but who are no longer at the address given during enrollment (based on subsequent attempts at follow up) have been submitted and will continue to be submitted (through NIOSH) in the standard format to the IRS under their Project 057 Taxpayer Address Request Program. Identifying data provided to the IRS include only SSN and the first four letters of last name of cohort member. IRS provides in return the most current address in IRS records if a match (SSN + all four letter of last name) is found. The purpose of this effort is to identify members of the cohort who have moved out of state, to enable adjustment of person-years for incidence and mortality calculations. Persons who have moved out of state can be followed for vital status and cause of death, but not for cancer incidence. Continuation of the protocol will provide a valuable epidemiologic resource to help prevent cancers in the future by identifying risk factors in the rural/agricultural environment. Because more cases of important cancer outcomes occur in this cohort every year, potential cancer causes can be evaluated with increased statistical power. Larger number of cases also allows for statistical control of confounding factors, making more meaningful conclusions about cancer risk, and, for some relatively infrequent cancers, such as the lyphomas and leukemias, greater follow-up time is necessary to make any meaningful observations.
The Heartland Study is a prospective, observational study that will enroll up to 2,600 pregnant participants across the Heartland States in the U.S.. The objective of the Heartland Study is to address major knowledge gaps concerning the health effects of herbicides on maternal and infant health. The study is being conducted to evaluate the associations between environmental exposures to herbicides during and after pregnancy and reproductive health outcomes. The study is measuring multiple biomarkers of herbicide exposure among pregnant Midwesterners and their partners to evaluate associations with pregnancy and childbirth outcomes, epigenetic biomarkers of exposure, and child development.
Background: The Agricultural Health Study (AHS) studied farmers and their spouses in North Carolina and Iowa. It also included people who worked with pesticides in Iowa. They answered a questionnaire and gave data about their children born since 1975. Researchers want to link this data to public data like birth and death certificates. They want to study how early life exposures to farms are linked to cancer and other bad health outcomes. Objective: To study data to find links between early life farm exposure and negative health outcomes. Eligibility: There will be no human subjects. Design: Researchers will get public data in the two study states. This will come from things like: Birth certificates Driver s licenses Voter registration Death certificates Based on these plus the AHS data, they will create a study group. It will be called Early Life Exposure in Agriculture (ELEA). Researchers will link ELEA data to cancer data. This will identify prevalence of cancer. They will study parents answers on the AHS. The topics include farm practices and pesticide use. They will determine ELEA exposure to pesticides. Researchers will analyze the cancer and pesticide results and look for links.
This protocol describes an exposure assessment study of farmers in North Carolina and Iowa who personally apply the fungicides captan, thiophanate-methyl, and benomyl to apple and peach orchards. The exposure assessment will include environmental measurements as well as biological monitoring data. The biomonitoring data will be based on 24-hour urinary metabolites of the three fungicides selected for study. The study is being done in collaboration with the Argicultural Health Study (AHS), a large prospective health study of licensed private (farmer) and commercial applicators, and the spouses of private applicators. The AHS is sponsored by the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the Environmental Protection Agency. The study described here will be conducted by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health. In summary, the objectives of this study are 1) to measure actual exposures to the target fungicides using both environmental and biological measures of exposure, 2) to identify and quantify major determinants of exposure, 3) to describe within- and between-worker exposure variability, and 4) to evaluate, to the extent possible, agreement between exposure estimates computed using the AHS exposure algorithms and exposure estimates based on actual measurements.
The goal of this project is to develop and test the effectiveness of a Lay Health Advisor program to teach migrant and seasonal farmworkers about pesticide safety in their homes. This is a community-based collaborative research project in which we first conduct in-depth interviews with farmworkers to learn about their knowledge and beliefs relative to pesticide exposure in the home, and, second, develop the content of the Lay Health Advisor program based on this formative information. We will evaluate this program by conducting pre- and post-test interviews with farmworkers, and comparing safety and knowledge to a control group who receive other important health education.