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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | A common class of insecticides puts farmers at high risk of diabetes -Megha Prakash

A common class of insecticides puts farmers at high risk of diabetes -Megha Prakash

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published Published on Mar 11, 2017   modified Modified on Mar 11, 2017
-Down to Earth

Long-term exposure to organophosphate insecticides puts the farming community at a higher risk of developing diabetes, shows a study

IN 2011, a 15-year-old girl from Madurai was admitted to hospital for diabetes ketoacidosis. It is a life-threatening condition that develops when cells in the body are unable to get the sugar (glucose) they need due to the lack of insulin. Krishnan Swaminathan, an endocrinologist and president of the Coimbatore-based Kovai Medical Centre and Hospital, saw that the girl was not responding to treatment. “We reinvestigated the case and found high residues of an organophosphate (OP) insecticide in her blood and urine samples. When we asked her parents, they told us she had consumed the insecticide because she had scored less marks in her school examination,” he says. Derived from phosphoric acid, OPs are a popular class of pesticides. They are also notorious as the poison chosen by farmers to commit suicide.

Around the time, the case of a 12-year-old boy suffering from a similar condition was reported from Mysuru, Karnataka. The boy had eaten tomatoes from a field without washing them only a few hours earlier. Swaminathan says that it was due to this impact of the chemical on the body’s insulin function that he first thought there could be a link between OP exposure and diabetes. The observations in these cases formed the premise of a study conducted by a team from the Madurai Kamaraj University to investigate the high prevalence of diabetes being reported from rural areas. “Chronic exposure to organophosphate not only induces diabetes but also leads to impaired glucose tolerance (type II diabetes) in both humans and mice,” says Ganesan Velmurugan, lead author of the paper published in the January issue of Genome Biology. Previous studies had shown a high prevalence of diabetes in rural Tamil Nadu, but this is the first study to link pesticide exposure to the disease.

The researchers surveyed 3,080 people from seven villages in Thirupparan-kundram block of Madurai district. Participants were above the age of 35 years. Almost 55 per cent of them were from the farming community and were, hence, more likely to be exposed to OPs. Based on the blood test results, it was found that the prevalence of diabetes among the farming community was three times higher (18.3 per cent) than that in the non-farming community (6.2 per cent), despite the low level of typical risk factors such as obesity, high cholesterol and physical inactivity.

Take the case of Sakthivel, a 50-year-old farmer from Vadapalanji village near Madurai. He grows vegetables such as tomatoes, okra, snake gourd and bitter gourd, in addition to paddy, on his 0.8-hectare farm. Once every week, he sprays his own farm and those of others with pesticides. He dislikes wearing a mask or gloves and even skips wearing protective boots. Until his blood was tested by the researchers in 2016, he was unaware that he was suffering from type II diabetes. Sakthivel is neither obese nor does he have a family history of the disease. Like others diagnosed with diabetes during the survey, he has now been put on metformin, a common diabetes medicine, and a strict diet.

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Down to Earth, 10 March, 2017, http://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/toxic-spray-57309


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