Systematic Literature Review of the Take-Home Route of Pesticide Exposure via Biomonitoring and Environmental Monitoring

Exposure to pesticides via take-home can be an important pathway for farmworkers' families. The aim of this review was to summarize and analyze the literature published during the last decade of exposure to pesticides via take-home pathway in farmworkers' families. We conducted a systematic review to identify peer-reviewed articles of interest; only articles related to take-home pathway that included some sort of pesticide monitoring were considered for inclusion. Systematic reviews, literature reviews, and meta-analyses were excluded, resulting in a total of 39 articles elected for analysis. The articles were summarized based on the location of the study, population (sample size), pesticide analyzed, and type of sample. The majority of the reviewed studies were conducted in the U.S., but there seems to be an increase in literature on pesticide take-home pathway in developing countries. Most of the articles provided evidence that farmworkers' families are exposed to pesticides at higher levels than non-farmworkers' families. The levels may depend on several factors such as seasonality, parental occupation, cohabitation with a farmworker, behavior at work/home, age, and gender. Community-based interventions disrupting the take-home pathway seem to be effective at reducing pesticide exposure. The take-home pathway is an important contributor to overall residential exposures, but other pathways such as pesticide drift, indoor-residential applications, and dietary intake need to be considered. A more comprehensive exposure assessment approach is necessary to better understand exposures to pesticides.