Skip to main content

Advertisement

Log in

Pesticides: an update of human exposure and toxicity

  • Review Article
  • Published:
Archives of Toxicology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Pesticides are a family of compounds which have brought many benefits to mankind in the agricultural, industrial, and health areas, but their toxicities in both humans and animals have always been a concern. Regardless of acute poisonings which are common for some classes of pesticides like organophosphoruses, the association of chronic and sub-lethal exposure to pesticides with a prevalence of some persistent diseases is going to be a phenomenon to which global attention has been attracted. In this review, incidence of various malignant, neurodegenerative, respiratory, reproductive, developmental, and metabolic diseases in relation to different routes of human exposure to pesticides such as occupational, environmental, residential, parental, maternal, and paternal has been systematically criticized in different categories of pesticide toxicities like carcinogenicity, neurotoxicity, pulmonotoxicity, reproductive toxicity, developmental toxicity, and metabolic toxicity. A huge body of evidence exists on the possible role of pesticide exposures in the elevated incidence of human diseases such as cancers, Alzheimer, Parkinson, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, asthma, bronchitis, infertility, birth defects, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism, diabetes, and obesity. Most of the disorders are induced by insecticides and herbicides most notably organophosphorus, organochlorines, phenoxyacetic acids, and triazine compounds.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3

Similar content being viewed by others

References

Download references

Acknowledgments

This invited paper is the outcome of an in-house financially non-supported study. The authors wish to thank Iran National Science Foundation (INSF).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mohammad Abdollahi.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Mostafalou, S., Abdollahi, M. Pesticides: an update of human exposure and toxicity. Arch Toxicol 91, 549–599 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00204-016-1849-x

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00204-016-1849-x

Keywords

Navigation