A new study revealed significant health risks for coffee farmworkers in southern Minas Gerais, Brazil, stemming from exposure to triazole fungicides. The chemicals are used throughout the global coffee sector to fight coffee leaf rust and other plant diseases.
The study also found cause for hope, as the research team verified a computational toxicology tool that can potentially provide accurate comparisons of toxic exposure between human subjects and laboratory samples.
“We used laboratory [in vitro] assays, compared them to data drawn from actual people [in vivo], and found an essentially perfect correlation,” Nicole Kleinstreuer, a director in a toxicology division of the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, said in an announcement of the findings. “For the first time, we showed that data from human cell-based assays were highly predictive of effects and exposures and concentrations in people — a true human to human, apples to apples comparison.”
The study initially focused on 140 farmworkers and their spouses from rural coffee-growing regions in Minas Gerais and compared them to 50 urban residents with no known synthetic herbicide exposure.
Conducted by Luiz Paulo de Aguiar Marciano of the Brazil’s Federal University of Alfenas, the field research found that men working on the farms experienced significantly reduced levels of testosterone and androstenedione — key hormones for various biological functions.
Those hormonal imbalances have been associated with broader metabolic disturbances, including higher cholesterol, LDL and glucose levels, according to the study authors.
A coffee plant with markers of leaf rust. “2DU colombia 29” by CIAT International Center for Tropical Agriculture is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
Biomarkers of fungicide toxicity were also found in the spouses of the rural farmworkers, but not in any of the 50 urban subjects.
“They looked at steroid hormone levels, markers of oxidative stress, markers of genotoxicity, markers of liver function through enzymes, and found significant differences in the exposed group versus the urban control,” Kleinstreuer said.
Triazole chemicals in a wide variety of synthetic herbicides, while usage remains highly controversial due to proven detrimental health effects on humans, particularly farmworkers, and the demonstrated efficacy in combating plant disease.
Published in the Elsevier journal Science of the Total Environment, the new study offers fresh evidence, both through human testing and computational modeling, regarding the negative effects of triazoles in coffee.
“[The study] provides evidence that people are at elevated risk of toxicity and that there is a need to develop better risk management strategies,” said Kleinstreuer, “such as setting up more training programs to help them understand the importance of using personal protective equipment and following fungicide usage directions.”
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