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Stock status, urban public perception, and health risk assessment of obsolete pesticide in Northern Ethiopia

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Abstract

Pesticides are widely used chemicals in the agricultural sector to control pests, diseases, and other plant pathogens. This study aimed to assess the storage conditions of pesticides, the community perception, and health risk of pesticide exposure. The study was conducted in three different zonal cities in Ethiopia, East Africa, namely Mekelle, Aksum, and Alamata. Community perception was studied in a community living near a pesticide stockpile with a cross-sectional study of 384 randomly selected households. In addition, questionnaires were administered, a field investigation was conducted, and focused group discussions with responsible bodies were held to assess storage condition. Accidental ingestion and inhalation were considered to determine average daily exposure (ADE) and incremental lifetime cancer risk (ILCR). This study reveals that all obsolete and banned hazardous pesticides were stored in one area. The storage sites were only secured with simple locks and exposed to rain, sunlight, and temperature variation. The majority of the residents perceived that pesticides pose risk to human health (46.6%), to the environment (28.4%), and to animals (25%). The association between residence proximity of respondents to the store and side effect of obsolete pesticides is statistically significant (p = 0.008). Children aged 2 years and below have higher ADE when exposed to the same concentration of contaminant via inhalation. The probability of a person developing cancer was very low with a risk value of 2.54E−08 and 1.65E−07 as a result of exposure to air containing heptachlor and dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), respectively.

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Funding

This study was funded by the Youth Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (41701564), Suzhou Science and Technology Plan Program (SNG201613), and Natural Science Foundation of the higher education institutions of Jiangsu Province, China (17KJB610010).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Suzhou University of Science and Technology, Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, China

    Sisay Abebe Debela, Jian Wu, Xinyao Chen & Yuan Zhang

  2. Ethiopian Environment and Forest Research Institute, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

    Sisay Abebe Debela

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  1. Sisay Abebe Debela
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  2. Jian Wu
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  4. Yuan Zhang
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Correspondence to Yuan Zhang.

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Debela, S.A., Wu, J., Chen, X. et al. Stock status, urban public perception, and health risk assessment of obsolete pesticide in Northern Ethiopia. Environ Sci Pollut Res 27, 25837–25847 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-019-05694-x

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