Environmental Toxicovigilance Among Rural Women in Agricultural Regions of Southern Brazil: A Community-Based Educational Intervention Supported by Human Biomonitoring

Southwestern Paraná, Brazil, is characterized by intensive family farming, in which chronic occupational and environmental exposure to pesticides is a major public health concern. This community-based, uncontrolled, pre-post mixed-methods intervention study implemented a toxicovigilance and health education program and evaluated changes in pesticide exposure among rural women. Discussion circles and educational activities were conducted with 492 women farmers from seven community groups in five municipalities with high pesticide use. Human biomonitoring was performed in a subset: 42 women provided pre-intervention urine samples, and 19 of these participants returned post-intervention samples, constituting the paired follow-up subgroup. The 23 participants without a second sample were considered lost to biomonitoring follow-up. Urinary glyphosate was quantified by nano-UPLC-MS/MS and normalized to urinary creatinine. Mean creatinine-adjusted glyphosate concentrations were 11.6 ± 2.15 ppb/mg/dL creatinine at baseline (n = 42) and 3.0 ± 0.98 ppb/mg/dL creatinine after the intervention (n = 19). All 19 women with complete paired follow-up showed lower post-intervention concentrations (95% CI 82.4–100%, p < .001). The intervention focused particularly on safe handling and laundering of pesticide-contaminated clothing and the use of rubber gloves. These findings indicate that urinary glyphosate concentrations were lower after the educational intervention.