Food is a necessity for all living creatures, which in turn, makes farmers and agricultural workers vital. Years ago, most people were agricultural workers and few worked in urban settings. Food was planted and tended to in natural settings and was grown based on the seasons and natural layouts of the land. However, times have since changed and with new technology, new ways of growing crops and producing food have been introduced. These new technologies have been developed in an attempt to accommodate for the increases in the human population, as well as for the changes in living conditions. For example, the human population has greatly increased, so more food must be produced in order to properly provide for everyone. Thus, pesticides and genetically modified foods are amongst the few changes that have been made to replace the organic, more natural way of farming. That being said, being a farmer or agricultural worker in this day and age comes with many dangers and risks. These workers are exposed to many chemicals and pesticides that have harmful effects to the human genome and thus, farmers are at great risk for genetic aberrations and alterations.
A research study published in the Journal of Occupational Health (Miranda-Contreras et al., 2013), was found that chronic pesticide exposure caused damage to sperm chromatin. This in turn caused a decrease in semen quality, causing changes in reproductive hormones and essentially an overall decrease in reproductive health. The results of a study conducted on Pakistani workers showed that long term exposure to pesticides does in fact cause DNA damage (Bhallo et al., 2009). In central Italy, a study was conducted which provided clear proof for the existence of cell proliferation delays due to the chemical compounds individuals were exposed to due to their agricultural work.
Pesticides can also cause terrible damage to an individuals genome. Evidence shows that prolonged pesticide exposure can have a statistically significant effect on the genome of a human, especially during the pesticide spraying season (Lebailly et al., 2015). Therefore, safety measures must be taken, such as requiring agricultural workers to wear personal protective gear. In addition, farming organic instead of using a plethora of chemicals, would be a safer alternative to constant pesticide exposure (Costa et al., 2014). It is clear that agricultural workers and farmers face high genotoxic risks by simply going to work, day after day. It remains of the utmost importance that these workers are educated about the dangers they face in order that they may take the proper precautions necessary to protect themselves.
If such dangers are present to the workers who simply grow the crops, imagining the genotoxic risks of those who ingest these foods are quite scary. One protective measure we can all take to protect us from pesticides is to ensure that we wash our fruits and vegetables before eating them. Simply wiping them down on article of clothing is not nearly as efficient as washing them with soap and water. With these healthy habits, perhaps we can protect ourselves from these toxic chemicals, thereby protecting ourselves from genetic aberrations.