Mortality in agriculture workers: a case-control study in Italy.

Authors

Claudio Gariazzo, Alessandro Marinaccio, Dario Consonni, Lucia Miligi

Published in

Epidemiologia e prevenzione. Volume 50. Issue 3. Pages 290-300.

Abstract

population working or living in agriculture settings may experience important exposure to pesticides and other agents. Although some health effects associated with them are well known, for others (e.g., neurological diseases and lymphoid, hematopoietic and related tissue cancers) additional epidemiological evidence is needed.
to investigate mortality for neurological diseases and cancer in workers employed in agriculture in Italy.
case-control study using mortality data linked with working histories retrieved from the Italian National Social Insurance archive.
countrywide mortality data from 2005 to 2018 were used. Cases were blue-collar workers with primary/middle school education who died from selected causes; controls were individuals with the same characteristics, but died from all other causes. Each participant was assigned to the economic sector in which he/she worked for the longest period. Cause-specific mortality odds ratios (MORs) adjusted for age class, educational level, year of death, and region of residence were estimated using logistic regression models in which exposure of interest was "ever/never" (or length of employment) in agriculture using the service sectors as (unexposed) reference category. Analyses were adjusted for or stratified by gender.
MORs for causes of death within the groups of mental, behavioural and neurodevelopmental disorders (F01-F99), diseases of the nervous system (G00-G99), and malignant neoplasms (C00-C96)Results: about 64,000 workers employed in agriculture were included and compared with a control group of 107,000 workers in the service sector. Elevated mortality risk in agriculture workers was found for spinal muscular atrophy (MOR 1.26; 95%CI 1.03-1.56; 261 deaths) and Parkinson's disease (PD) (MOR 1.16; 95%CI 1.00-1.34; 742 deaths). As for cancer mortality, positive associations were found for non-follicular lymphoma (NFL) (MOR 1.59; 95%CI 1.03-2.46; 82 deaths), multiple myeloma (MM) (MOR 1.42; 95%CI 1.22-1.65; 546 deaths), and myeloid leukaemia (ML) (MOR 1.36; 95%CI 1.16-1.60; 474 deaths), as well as for stomach (MOR 1.30; 95%CI 1.20-1.41; 1,732 deaths), prostate (MOR 2.03; 95%CI 1.85-2.24, 1,582 deaths), and brain and central nervous system cancer (MOR 1.30; 95%CI 1.13-1.50; 601 deaths). PD, NFL, ML, cancers of skin, of connective and soft tissue, of prostate and of brain were found to involve mainly men.
employment in agriculture has been associated with various health risks, some of which may be attributed to pesticides exposure. Although the use of the different agronomic categories of pesticides changed over time and some active ingredients were prohibited or limited, their health effects remain of concern for their large use, demanding further focused investigations and preventive measures.

PMID:
42444463
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 14 Jul 2026.

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