Pesticide workers’ Health surveillance experiences in Latin America

Pesticide use and its impacts in agricultural workers have long being documented in Latin America. Actions to monitor pesticide exposure have been punctually or sub-regionally approached, but the health and death burden they have caused still remain highly prevalent. This is considered one of the many critical issues that threaten the way for aiming productive and sustainable agriculture. Biological monitoring and hazard control, and integrated pest management programs play an important role for protecting agricultural worker’s health and for the transition from the chemical intensive commercial agriculture to low-input management.   Methods A systematic search and the review of several country and sub-regional reports were conducted to obtain information about different pesticide workers’ health surveillance programs and other monitoring systems that have been developed in several countries and sub-regions of Latin America.   Results Many local, national and regional programs such as PLAGSALUD have been distributed and applied throughout the region, collecting the evidence about the burden of disease caused by acute pesticide poisonings. Other systems like SALTRA have achieved to develop occupational surveillance programs, making evident the burden of chronic and lethal diseases such as occupational cancer and reproductive health issues.   Discussion Latin America is an agricultural region, with a very high annual rate of pesticide expenditure close. Despite the efforts made by governments and the agro-chemical industry to implementing programs oriented towards safe and effective use of pesticides, the risk of acute and chronic poisonings persist to be high. Strategies to reduce accidental exposures caused by illegal or improper use, reducing environmental impact, and programs aiming to reduce exposure should be conducted together with worker’s health surveillance systems that could help detect early exposures indexes before falling into acute or chronic poisonings. This requires political will, inter-sectorial policy, effective actions and technical advances, as wel as evidence through research.