Risk assessment of occupational pesticide exposure: Use of endpoints and surrogates

Pesticides occupy a special position among various chemical agents that are present in the environment because of to their toxicity, wide use, mainly in mixtures, and lack of action selectivity. To correlate the toxic effects to the pesticides exposure, biomarkers called endpoints are used and often use highly predictive adverse effects or death; however, there is a constant search for markers that may determine the effects of exposure before the organisms suffer from them, and these markers are the so-called surrogate endpoints. The objective of this work was to present endpoints and surrogate endpoints applied in risk assessment of occupational exposure to pesticides. After the revision of the literature, it was possible to conclude that the authors are considering different parameters as endpoint although their use is consensus as essential tools during all stages of risk assessment. The toxicological data are from traditional models however the future trend is to knowledge the effects of the exposure to several pesticides and to apply some endpoints and surrogates to monitoring the simultaneous exposure to complex mixtures.