Fungicide Exposure Assessment Among Apple and Peach Farmers in the Argicultural Health Study

This protocol describes an exposure assessment study of farmers in North Carolina and Iowa who personally apply the fungicides captan, thiophanate-methyl, and benomyl to apple and peach orchards. The exposure assessment will include environmental measurements as well as biological monitoring data. The biomonitoring data will be based on 24-hour urinary metabolites of the three fungicides selected for study. The study is being done in collaboration with the Argicultural Health Study (AHS), a large prospective health study of licensed private (farmer) and commercial applicators, and the spouses of private applicators. The AHS is sponsored by the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the Environmental Protection Agency. The study described here will be conducted by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health. In summary, the objectives of this study are 1) to measure actual exposures to the target fungicides using both environmental and biological measures of exposure, 2) to identify and quantify major determinants of exposure, 3) to describe within- and between-worker exposure variability, and 4) to evaluate, to the extent possible, agreement between exposure estimates computed using the AHS exposure algorithms and exposure estimates based on actual measurements.