Agribusiness and pesticides: impacts on the health of agricultural workers in northeastern Brazil

• Autor(a) principal: Araújo, Isabelle Maria Mendes de
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Outros Autores: Oliveira, Ângelo Giuseppe Roncalli da Costa
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Trabalho, Educação e Saúde (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://www.tes.epsjv.fiocruz.br/index.php/tes/article/view/1079
• topic: intoxicação; letalidade; agroindústria; trabalhadores rurais; intoxication; lethality; agribusiness; rural workers; intoxicación; letalidad; agroindustria; trabajadores rurales

When considering the Brazilian context of increasing agricultural productivity associated with monocultures, agribusiness, and the intensive use of pesticides, various negative externalities emerge as having social and environmental impact and affecting public health. The purpose of this article is to discuss the strengthening of agribusiness in Brazil, including its construction as a historical model of modernization expanding nationwide and growing in the Northeast. It also aims to address the issue of pesticides and health, correlating them to cases of human poisoning. To this end, we analyzed the modernization model anchored on the agribusiness, transgenics, and pesticides tripod, and discussed the cases of pesticide poisoning, via agricultural and domestic uses, through the systematization of National Toxicopharmacological Information System database between the years of 1999 and 2011 in the Northeast. We note that in recent years, agribusiness has strengthened itself and the number of pesticide poisoning cases have grown, especially in the Northeast, which has the highest rates of mortality caused by pesticide poisoning in Brazil, mainly affecting farm workers.