INTRODUCTION Job exposure in agricultural workers often leads to respiratory impairment. AIM To assess the influence of exposure duration and smoking on chronic respiratory symptoms and ventilatory capacity in agricultural workers. METHODS A cross-sectional study covered 75 agricultural workers, compared with an equal number of office workers matched by age, exposure duration and smoking st...

Forty three patients (42%) used agricultural chemicals as a method of suicide over nine and a half years (from Oct. 1981 to March 1991), and most cases were reported in June (agricultural activity) and December (year's end). The highest prevalence was inpatients in their fifties (34.9%). 58.1% of these patients who committed suicide were farmers or had no fixed occupation. Main precipitating fa...

OBJECTIVES High microbial exposures in farmers and agricultural workers are associated with less atopy. Although it has been speculated that healthy worker survival could be an explanation, this has not been studied so far. Therefore, we investigated the presence of healthy worker survival in a five-year follow-up study of an occupational cohort of Dutch farmers and agricultural industry (compa...

A study was conducted to determine if nitrate sources in ground water (fertilizer on crops, fertilizer on golf courses, irrigation spray from hog (Sus scrofa) wastes, and leachate from poultry litter and septic systems) could be classified with 80% or greater success. Two statistical classification-tree models were devised from 48 water samples containing nitrate from five source categories. Mo...

OBJECTIVES To determine whether the jurisdiction in which a work-related injury compensation claim is made is an independent predictor of duration of time off work following work injury, and if so, the magnitude of the effect. SETTING Eight Australian state and territory workers' compensation systems, providing coverage for more than 90% of the Australian labour force. Administrative claims d...

Gene flow in agricultural crops is important for risk assessment of genetically modified (GM) crops, particularly in countries with a large informal agricultural sector of subsistence cultivation. We present a pollen flow model for maize (Zea mays), a major staple crop in Africa. We use spatial properties of fields (size, position) in three small-scale maize farming communities in Zambia and es...

Sludge Treatment Reed Beds (STRBs) are widely used in Northern Europe to dewater and mineralize surplus sludge from activated sludge systems used to treat urban domestic sewage. STRBs are low-technology, energy-efficient, and do not require addition of chemicals. They dewater and stabilize the sludge and produce a final product that can be safely used as a fertilizer for agricultural crops. Lon...

What is a corvid? There are just over 120 species of corvids, a family of songbirds that includes the crows, ravens, rooks and jackdaws, as well as the more colourful jays, magpies and nutcrackers. Although belonging to the same order as nightingales and other birds with melodious songs (Oscines), corvids tend to be identified by their raucous calls. Little is known about corvid songs, perhaps ...

Pest detection and identification of diseases in agricultural crops is essential to ensure good productivity. The productivity of plants will reduce due to diseases and presence of pests. Image processing can be used to identify the pests and thereby can reduce the use of pesticides. Image processing involves capturing the image and applying various preprocessing techniques and detect the pest ...

Effects of agricultural intensification (AI) on biodiversity are often assessed on the plot scale, although processes determining diversity also operate on larger spatial scales. Here, we analyzed the diversity of vascular plants, carabid beetles, and birds in agricultural landscapes in cereal crop fields at the field (n = 1350), farm (n = 270), and European-region (n = 9) scale. We partitioned...