Exposure of Agriculture Workers to Pesticides: The Effect of Heat on Protective Glove Performance and Skin Exposure to Dichlorvos

Leigh Thredgold, Sharyn Gaskin, Chloe Quy and Dino Pisaniello
Additional contact information
Leigh Thredgold: Adelaide Exposure Science and Health, School of Public Health, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia 5000, Australia
Sharyn Gaskin: Adelaide Exposure Science and Health, School of Public Health, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia 5000, Australia
Chloe Quy: Adelaide Exposure Science and Health, School of Public Health, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia 5000, Australia
Dino Pisaniello: Adelaide Exposure Science and Health, School of Public Health, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia 5000, Australia

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 23, 1-11

Abstract: Dichlorvos is a toxic organophosphate insecticide that is used in agriculture and other insecticide applications. Dermal uptake is a known exposure route for dichlorvos and chemical protective gloves are commonly utilized. Chemical handling and application may occur in a variety of thermal environments, and the rates of both chemical permeation through gloves and transdermal penetration may vary significantly with temperature. There has been no published research on the temperature-dependent kinetics of these processes for dichlorvos and thus, this study reports on the effects of hot conditions for the concentrated and application strength chemical. Dichlorvos breakthrough times for non-disposable polyvinyl chloride (PVC) gloves at 60 °C were approximately halved compared to 25 °C for the concentrate (2 vs. 4 h) and more than halved at application strength (3 vs. >8 h). From permeation experiments covering 15–60 °C, there was a 460-fold increase in cumulative permeation over 8 h for the concentrated dichlorvos and the estimated activation energy halved. Elevated temperature was also shown to be a significant factor for human skin penetration increasing the cumulative penetration of concentrate dichlorvos from 179 ± 37 to 1315 ± 362 µg/cm 2 ( p = 0.0032) and application strength from 29.8 ± 5.7 to 115 ± 19 µg/cm 2 ( p = 0.0131). This work illustrates the important role temperature plays in glove performance and health risk via dermal exposure. As such, it is important to consider in-use conditions of temperature when implementing chemical hygiene programs.

Keywords: organophosphate; protective gloves; dermal; percutaneous penetration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/23/4798/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/23/4798/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:16:y:2019:i:23:p:4798-:d:292288

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().