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Passive environmental residential exposure to agricultural pesticides and hematological malignancies in the general population: a systematic review

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Abstract

Incidence rates of hematological malignancies have been constantly increasing over the past 40 years. In parallel, an expanding use of agricultural pesticides has been observed. Only a limited number of studies investigated the link between hematological malignancies risk and passive environmental residential exposure to agricultural pesticides in the general population. The purpose of our review was to summarize the current state of knowledge on that question. A systematic literature search was conducted using PubMed and Scopus databases. We built a scoring scale to appraise relevance of each selected articles. We included 23 publications: 13 ecological studies, 9 case-control studies and a cohort study. Positive associations were reported between hematological malignancies and individual pesticides, pesticide groups, all pesticides without distinction, or some crop types. Relevance score was highly various across studies regardless of their design. Children studies were the majority and had overall higher relevance scores. The effect of passive environmental residential exposure to agricultural pesticides on hematological malignancies risk is suggested by the literature. The main limitation of the literature available is the high heterogeneity across studies, especially in terms of exposure assessment approach. Further studies with high methodological relevance should be conducted.

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Abbreviations

ALL:

Acute lymphoid leukemia

AML:

Acute myeloid leukemia

EPA:

the Environmental Protection Agency

HL:

Hodgkin’s lymphoma

HM:

Hematological malignancies

IARC:

International Agency for Research on Cancer

MM:

Multiple myeloma

NHL:

Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma

OR:

Odds ratio

PUR:

Pesticide use reports

RR:

Relative risk

SRR:

Standardized rate ratio

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the French League Against Cancer and Professor Marc Maynadié of Dijon University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Gironde Register of Hematologic Malignancies, Institut Bergonié, 229 cours de l’Argonne, 33000, Bordeaux, France

    Camille Roingeard, Alain Monnereau, Sébastien Orazio & Blandine Vacquier

  2. INSERM U1219 EPICENE Team, Université de Bordeaux - ISPED case 11, 46 rue Léo-Saignat, 33076, Bordeaux cedex, France

    Alain Monnereau, Sébastien Orazio, Ghislaine Bouvier & Blandine Vacquier

  3. French Network of Cancer Registries (FRANCIM), 37 allées Jules-Guesde, C/o Université Paul Sabatier, Faculté de médecine, 31073, Toulouse cedex, France

    Alain Monnereau

  4. INSERM U1153 EPICEA Team, Université Paris Descartes, 16 avenue Paul Vaillant Couturier - Bat 15/16, 94807, Villejuif Cedex, France

    Stéphanie Goujon

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  1. Camille Roingeard
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  2. Alain Monnereau
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BV and AM had the idea for the article, CR performed the literature search and data analysis, CR, BV, and GB drafted the work, and SG, AM, and SO critically revised the work.

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Correspondence to Camille Roingeard.

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Roingeard, C., Monnereau, A., Goujon, S. et al. Passive environmental residential exposure to agricultural pesticides and hematological malignancies in the general population: a systematic review. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 43190–43216 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-14789-3

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