Assessment of Health Impact on Agricultural Workers and Rural Inhabitants Exposed to Pesticide in Selected Towns in Southern Region of Ekiti State, Nigeria

Many studies in and outside Nigeria has established that Nigerian farmers depend heavily on pesticides for agricultural purposes. Exposure to it have shown varying health impairment. Thus, this study assesses the effect of pesticide exposure on health of agricultural workers an rural inhabitant of southern Ekiti. The study adopts a cross-sectional descriptive, while convenience sampling was used to sample 306 agricultural workers who have record of pesticide use. Descriptive statistics were used to describe information. Chi-square test was used to test the dependence of pesticide exposure and health impairment. 72% of the farmers used pesticide for agricultural purposes while 83.7% use pesticides at home. Most of them used for over 2 years (69.6% on the field and 56.2% at home). Of the respondents, 53.4% have experienced at least one health challenges or the other due to pesticide exposure. The Chi square test of independence between pesticide exposure and health impairment shows a P-value of 0.0439, the P-value of the test between knowledge and use of pesticide is 0.275, and the P-value of type of crop cultivated and health impairment is 0.093. This reveals that exposure to pesticide results in health challenges; farmers’ knowledge about pesticide did not influence proper use of it; and exposure to pesticide due to type of crop planted by farmers did not significantly lead to health impairment of farmers. The study concludes that improper use of pesticide among the farmers results in one health challenge or the other. It is thus recommended that farmers should carefully read and adhere to instruction on pesticide containers; farmers should adopt the use of PPEs; government should build and maintain health care facilities to aid prompt treatment of short-term effect of pesticides.