SENSOR-Pesticides Program
The mission of the Sentinel Event Notification System for Occupational Risk (SENSOR) program is to build and maintain occupational illness and injury surveillance capacity within state health departments. Under this program, NIOSH provides cooperative agreement funding and technical support to state health departments to conduct surveillance on one or more occupational illnesses or injuries. One of the illnesses supported under SENSOR is acute occupational pesticide-related illness and injury. Health departments in six states (California, Iowa, Michigan, New York, Texas, and Washington) receive NIOSH funding and technical support to bolster pesticide-related illness and injury surveillance. Six additional states are unfunded SENSOR-Pesticides partners and receive technical support from NIOSH (Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Oregon). Funding support for the SENSOR-pesticides program is also provided by the US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA).
SENSOR-Pesticides National Aggregated Database
Besides tabulating the number of acute occupational pesticide-related cases, these SENSOR-supported surveillance systems perform in-depth investigations for case confirmation, and develop preventive interventions aimed at particular industries or pesticide hazards. The SENSOR-Pesticides program is most useful for timely identification of outbreaks and emerging pesticide problems. However, a national aggregated database is also available. It consists of acute occupational pesticide-related illness and injury cases submitted by the SENSOR-pesticides states in 1998 to 2002. This database is useful to assess the magnitude and trend of acute occupational pesticide-related illness and injury.