THE PERCEPTION OF THE USERS OF PESTICIDES ON THEM SCRATCHES OUT OF INTOXICATION IN IRATI, PARANÁ

Abstract

ABSTRACT The exaggerating job of pesticides in the last decades has been causing serious problems to the environment and the human health. In spite of the intoxication risk, in the Irati city (State of Paraná), a great number of people use pesticide. The questions of this study are: “Which would the reasons of that high number of intoxications be?” and “Do the users have knowledge of the risks?”. The present work had for objective to identify the perception of the risks of users' of pesticides intoxication in the Irati city. The methodology was ruled in the analysis of the data of intoxication incidence and in the application of an interview to 40 users of pesticides, the months of February and March of 2007. In Irati, during the period of January of 2001 to June of 2006, 97 cases of intoxication were registered by pesticides, and 70% of these happened in the rural area and 30% in the urban. The main road of identified contamination is the occupational, following for the alimentary. The obtained results demonstrated that most of the users of pesticides in the Irati city present sensitization and no understanding of the risks of intoxications, in other words, they possess knowledge of the risks that the pesticides present the human health, however, they don't take measures of safety during the use of the pesticides. Key words: Environmental Perception. Quality of Life. Risk Perception. Intoxication. Agrotoxin. Irati (State of Paraná).