Exposição a pesticidas e desenvolvimento de cânceres hematológicos : uma revisão sistemática

Abstract

The term “pesticide” covers a wide variety of uses (residential or in the field), products (insecticides, fungicides, herbicides, acaricides) and substances which can have immunotoxic, mutagenic or carcinogenic characteristics (depending or not of the dose and exposure time), which explains its association with the development of cancer. Agricultural workers are affected by direct and daily exposure, through the skin, mouth and breath; the urban population is exposed, mainly, from pesticide residues in food and also through the use of household pesticides, such as insecticides and rodenticides. The development of neoplasms related to exposure to synthetic pesticides is a subject that has already accumulated evidence, and there are several factors, due to oxidative stress, metabolic disorders and DNA damage, representing a serious public health problem. Epidemiological studies have a broad association with pesticides and hematological cancers, mainly leukemias, lymphomas, multiple myeloma and myelodysplastic syndrome. However, the etiology and pathophysiology of hematological malignancies still needs more intensive studies, as unfortunately it is still poorly understood, thus justifying the purpose of this work, which is to review the most recent literature to assess whether the data converge to common paths, and what are these. This review shows that the evidence relating exposure to pesticides and hematological cancers is more numerous than they discard, but that there is still a need for standardization of assessment methodologies to obtain more accurate biological and epidemiological data