J.M.
Russo, D.W.
Chrislip, E.F. Krieg and K.N. Steenland
NIOSH Education and Information Division
Agricultural
workers acutely poisoned by organophosphate pesticides were
examined for signs of residual neurobehavioral impairment
2-10 years after their apparent recovery. Eighty-three cases
of definite organophosphate poisoning (accompanied by cholinesterase
inhibition) and 46 cases of probable poisoning (lacking evidence
of cholinesterase inhibition) were identified from pesticide
illness reports maintained by the California Department of
Agriculture. An additional 45 individuals were identified
as having had one or more episodes of cholinesterase inhibition
without exhibiting overt symptoms of the poisoning. These
subjects, and a group of non-exposed individuals, were given
an assessment battery which included computerized tests of
postural balance, affective mood, finger tapping speed, sustained
attention, hand-eye coordination, short-term memory, and simple
reaction time. As reported previously by Steenland et al.
(1994), the poisoned individuals exhibited disturbances in
affective mood states and deficits in sustained attention,
but no impairment of simple reaction times. However, our subsequent
reexamination of the reaction time data, using statistical
models recently developed by Krieg et al. (1994), indicate
that there are subtle differences in the reaction times of
the individuals for whom definite or probable organophosphate
poisonings had been reported. Significant interactions between
poisoning status and age, and poisoning status and educational
level, were observed when factors depicting learning and fatigue
during the testing session were considered. These findings
suggest that there may be additional residual effects of the
acute poisoning episodes experienced by these individuals
which ar not reflected in standardized tests of simple reaction
time, but which reveal themselves as subtle deficits in task
learning ability and in accelerated neuromotor fatigue.
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NASD Review: 04/2002
This
research abstract was extracted from a portion of the proceedings
of "Agricultural Safety and Health: Detection, Prevention and
Intervention," a conference presented by the Ohio State University
and the Ohio Department of Health, sponsored by the Centers
for Disease Control/National Institute for Occupational Safety
and Health.
J.M.
Russo, D.W. Chrislip, E.F. Krieg and K.N. Steenland, NIOSH,
Cincinnati, OH.
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