Pesticides: an update of human exposure and toxicity

Abstract

Pesticides are a family of compounds which have brought many benefits to mankind in the agricultural, industrial, and health areas, but their toxicities in both humans and animals have always been a concern. Regardless of acute poisonings which are common for some classes of pesticides like organophosphoruses, the association of chronic and sub-lethal exposure to pesticides with a prevalence of some persistent diseases is going to be a phenomenon to which global attention has been attracted. In this review, incidence of various malignant, neurodegenerative, respiratory, reproductive, developmental, and metabolic diseases in relation to different routes of human exposure to pesticides such as occupational, environmental, residential, parental, maternal, and paternal has been systematically criticized in different categories of pesticide toxicities like carcinogenicity, neurotoxicity, pulmonotoxicity, reproductive toxicity, developmental toxicity, and metabolic toxicity. A huge body of evidence exists on the possible role of pesticide exposures in the elevated incidence of human diseases such as cancers, Alzheimer, Parkinson, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, asthma, bronchitis, infertility, birth defects, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism, diabetes, and obesity. Most of the disorders are induced by insecticides and herbicides most notably organophosphorus, organochlorines, phenoxyacetic acids, and triazine compounds.