Browsing by Author "Lucero, Boris"

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    Environmental health risk perception: Adaptation of a population-based questionnaire from latin america
    (MDPI AG, 2021) Cortés Arancibia, Sandra Isabel; Burgos, Soledad; Adaros, Héctor; Lucero, Boris; Quiróz-Alcalá, Lesliam; CEDEUS (Chile)
    BACKGROUND: Environmental risk assessments and interventions to mitigate environmental risks are essential to protect public health. While the objective measurement of environmental hazards is important, it is also critical to address the subjective perception of health risks. A population’s perception of environmental health hazards is a powerful driving force for action and engagement in safety and health behaviors and can also inform the development of effective and more sustainable environmental health policies. To date, no instruments are available to assess risk perception of environmental health hazards in South America even though there are many concerning issues in the region, including mining. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to adapt and validate an environmental health risk perception questionnaire in a Chilean population affected by mining activity among other risks frequently reported in Latin American countries and included the collection of information on trust on public information sources. METHODS: We adapted an Australian risk perception questionnaire for validation in an adult population from a Chilean mining community. This adaptation included two blinded translations (direct, inverse), a pre-test study (n = 20) and a review by environmental health experts. Principal Component Analyses (PCA) was used to identify factors within major domains of interest. The Bartlett test of sphericity, Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure and the Cronbach α test were used to assess the instrument’s validity and reliability. The instrument was pilot tested in 205 adults from a mining community in Chañaral. RESULTS: The final adapted questionnaire proved to be a good instrument to measure risk perception in a community chronically exposed to mining waste. For community risks, four factors explained 59.4% of the variance. “Global Issues” (30.2%) included air pollution, contamination of mining, ozone layer depletion and vector diseases. For personal risks, the first two components explained 59.5% of the variance, the main factor (36.7%) was “unhealthy behaviors within the household”. For trust in information, the first factor (36.2%) included as main sources “Media and authorities”. The Cronbach α ranged between 0.68 and 0.75; and the KMO test between 0.7 to 0.79 for community and personal risks and trust. CONCLUSIONS: The final questionnaire is a simple, reliable and useful instrument that can assist in evaluating environmental health risk perceptions in Latin American countries.
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    Health Effects of Pesticide Exposure in Latin American and the Caribbean Populations: A Scoping Review
    (Public Health Services, US Dept of Health and Human Services, 2022) Zúñiga-Venegas, Liliana A.; Jara, Juan P. Gutiérrez; Hyland, Carly; Cardenas, Andrés; Smith, Anna; Mora, Ana M.; Muñoz-Quezada, María Teresa; Lucero, Boris; Quirós-Alcalá, Lesliam; Butinof, Mariana; Buralli, Rafael; Fernandez, Ricardo A.; Foerster, Claudia; Gouveia, Nelson; Muñoz, María Pía; Ramírez-Santana, Muriel; Tirado, Noemi; Joode, Berna van Wendel; Calaf, Gloria M.; Handal, Alexis J.; Silva, Agnes Soares; Cortés Arancibia, Sandra Isabel
    © 2022, Public Health Services, US Dept of Health and Human Services. All rights reserved.BACKGROUND: Multiple epidemiological studies have shown that exposure to pesticides is associated with adverse health outcomes. However, the literature on pesticide-related health effects in the Latin American and the Caribbean (LAC) region, an area of intensive agricultural and residential pesticide use, is sparse. We conducted a scoping review to describe the current state of research on the health effects of pesticide exposure in LAC populations with the goal of identifying knowledge gaps and research capacity building needs. METHODS: We searched PubMed and SciELO for epidemiological studies on pesticide exposure and human health in LAC populations published between January 2007 and December 2021. We identified 233 publications from 16 countries that met our inclusion criteria and grouped them by health outcome (genotoxicity, neurobehavioral outcomes, placental outcomes and teratogenicity, cancer, thyroid function, reproductive outcomes, birth outcomes and child growth, and others). RESULTS: Most published studies were conducted in Brazil (37%, n = 88) and Mexico (20%, n = 46), were cross-sectional in design (72%, n = 167), and focused on farmworkers (45%, n = 105) or children (21%, n = 48). The most frequently studied health effects included genotoxicity (24%, n = 62) and neurobehavioral outcomes (21%, n = 54), and organophosphate (OP) pesticides were the most frequently examined (26%, n = 81). Forty-seven percent (n = 112) of the studies relied only on indirect pesticide exposure assessment methods. Exposure to OP pesticides, carbamates, or to multiple pesticide classes was consistently associated with markers of genotoxicity and adverse neurobehavioral outcomes, particularly among children and farmworkers. DISCUSSION: Our scoping review provides some evidence that exposure to pesticides may adversely impact the health of LAC populations, but methodological limitations and inconsistencies undermine the strength of the conclusions. It is critical to increase capacity building, integrate research initiatives, and conduct more rigorous epidemiological studies in the region to address these limitations, better inform public health surveillance systems, and maximize the impact of research on public policies.
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    Levels of Polychlorinated Dibenzo-p-Dioxins/Furans (PCDD/Fs) and Dioxin-Like Polychlorinated Biphenyls (DL-PCBs) in Human Breast Milk in Chile: A Pilot Study
    (2021) Foerster, Claudia; Zúñiga-Venegas, Liliana; Enríquez, Pedro; Rojas, Jacqueline; Zamora, Claudia; Muñoz, Ximena; Pancetti, Floria; Muñoz-Quezada, María Teresa; Lucero, Boris; Saracini, Chiara; Salas, Claudio; Cortés Arancibia, Sandra Isabel
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    Pesticide exposure in Chile and population health: urgency for decision making [Exposición a plaguicidas en Chile y salud poblacional: urgencia para la toma de decisiones]
    (2020) Zúñiga-Venegas, Liliana; Pancetti, Floria; Muñoz-Quezada, María Teresa; Lucero, Boris; Foerster, Claudia; Cortés Arancibia, Sandra Isabel; Saracini, Chiara; CEDEUS (Chile)
    In the last 25 years, Chile has had an expanding role as an agro-export country in the global economy, with efficient rates of productivity in the region, based on the technological development of agriculture, with of large monocultures whose productivity depends on the intensive application of agrochemicals. This form of agriculture has also lacked efficient regulations and surveillance, so it is difficult to estimate the real magnitude of the exposed population and its effects on health in the short or long term. This systema-tic review compiles the epidemiological evidence generated from studies conducted in several regions of Chile regarding pesticide exposure and health effects. Of the total number of articles, 50% included agricultural workers, 25% children, and 25% women of childbearing age, with the greatest effects being the neurotoxic (54%), genotoxic (31%) and reproductive (15%). The evidence collected shows that in Chile the levels of exposure to pesticides in the general and occupational population are higher than interna-tional studies levels. It is urgent to protect the health of both the occupational and general population and especially children through a stricter control of the sale and use of pesticides, with comprehensive surveillance systems in environmental health and educational actions in the social and cultural context of rural communities. It is a priority to strengthen research with national relevance on health effects, and strictly restrict the use of pesticides already prohibited in developed countries due to their high level of risk to human and environmental health. (c) 2020 SESPAS. Published by Elsevier Espana, S.L.U. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).