SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 16– A new study by the University of
California, Berkeley, suggests that elemental sulfur, the most heavily used
pesticide in California, may harm the respiratory health of children living
near farms that use the pesticide.
Published this week in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives,
the study establishes associations between elemental sulfur use and reduced
lung function, more asthma-related symptoms and higher asthma medication
use in children living about a half-mile, namely 800 meters, or less from
recent elemental sulfur applications compared to unexposed children. The
research was conducted at the agricultural community in Salinas Valley,
south of San Francisco Bay. Generally considered to be safe for the
environment and human health by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA), elemental sulfur is allowed for use on conventional and organic
crops to control fungus and other pests. It is the most heavily used
agricultural pesticide in California and Europe, according to a news
release from UC Berkeley. In California alone, more than 21 million
kilograms of elemental sulfur were applied in agriculture in 2013.
However, previous studies have shown that elemental sulfur is a
respiratory irritant to exposed farm workers. The chemical’s effect on
residential populations, especially children, living near treated fields
has not previously been studied despite its widespread use and potential to
drift from the fields where it is applied. In the first study to link
agricultural use of sulfur with poorer respiratory health in children
living nearby, Rachel Raanan, a UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow and the
study’s lead author, and her colleagues examined lung function and
asthma-related respiratory symptoms in hundreds of children living near
fields where sulfur had been applied, leading to the discovery of several
associations between poorer respiratory health and nearby elemental sulfur
use.
Among them, a 10-fold increase in the estimated amount of elemental
sulfur used within 1 kilometer of a child’s residence during the year prior
to pulmonary evaluation was associated with a 3.5-fold increased odds in
asthma medication usage and a two-fold increased odds in respiratory
symptoms such as wheezing and shortness of breath; and each 10-fold
increase in the amount of sulfur applied in the previous 12 months within a
1-kilometer radius of the home was associated with an average decrease of
143 milliliters per second (mL/s) in the maximal amount of air that the
7-year-old children could forcefully exhale in one second. For comparison,
the research has shown that exposure to maternal cigarette smoke is
associated with a decrease of 101 mL/s after five years of exposure.The
study’s authors call for more research to confirm these findings and
possible changes in regulations and application methods to limit impacts of
sulfur use on respiratory health. – XINHUA
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