Pesticide application, educational treatment and infectious respiratory diseases: A mechanistic model with two impulsive controls

PLoS One. 2020 Dec 3;15(12):e0243048. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0243048. eCollection 2020.

Abstract

In this paper, we develop and analyze an SIS-type epidemiological-mathematical model of the interaction between pesticide use and infectious respiratory disease transmission for investigating the impact of pesticide intoxication on the spread of these types of diseases. We further investigate the role of educational treatment for appropriate pesticide use on the transmission dynamics. Two impulsive control events are proposed: pesticide use and educational treatment. From the proposed model, it was obtained that the rate of forgetfulness towards educational treatment is a determining factor for the reduction of intoxicated people, as well as for the reduction of costs associated with educational interventions. To get reduced intoxications, the population's fraction to which is necessary to apply the educational treatment depends on its individual effectiveness level and the educational treatments' forgetfulness rate. In addition, the turnover of agricultural workers plays a fundamental role in the dynamics of agrotoxic use, particularly in the application of educational treatment. For illustration, a flu-like disease with a basic reproductive number below the epidemic threshold of 1.0 is shown can acquire epidemic potential in a population at risk of pesticide exposure. Hence, our findings suggest that educational treatment targeting pesticide exposure is an effective tool to reduce the transmission rate of an infectious respiratory disease in a population exposed to the toxic substance.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Agricultural Workers' Diseases / economics
  • Agricultural Workers' Diseases / epidemiology
  • Farmers / education*
  • Humans
  • Infections / drug therapy
  • Infections / transmission*
  • Models, Theoretical*
  • Occupational Exposure / adverse effects*
  • Pesticides / economics
  • Pesticides / toxicity*
  • Respiratory Tract Diseases / drug therapy
  • Respiratory Tract Diseases / epidemiology

Substances

  • Pesticides

Grants and funding

This work was funded by a research project of the National Commission on Science and Technology (CONICYT) of Chile, FONDECYT of Initiation #11150784. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.