19 Pesticides That Keep Farmers Awake at Night

For individual pesticides, significant associations (with sleep issues) were observed in 19 out of 38 individual pesticides — Study report

- ISSAC JAMES MANAYATH @Chennai

SLEEP has been the focus of a lot of research recently. Not getting enough sleep is being linked to a whole range of health issues. While sleep problems are often seen as an ‘urban issue’, they are also quite common in the countryside, especially among farmers.

In 2019, researchers from Ningxia Medical University in Yinchuan, China, did a study on greenhouse farmers in Yinchuan. They found that farmers with high exposure to pesticides had shorter sleep, worse sleep quality, and trouble sleeping. Another study by University College Dublin, which involved more than 300 Irish farmers, found that 50.1% of them reported having sleep problems. The Texas Farm Bureau says, “Farmers and ranchers often experience significant sleep deprivation, particularly during busy seasons like planting, harvesting, and calving.”

While stress and long working hours are the main reasons farmers don’t get enough shut-eye, other factors, like pesticide use, also need to be considered.

Many recent studies have found a link between pesticide exposure and sleep problems in farmers.