Mortality of pesticide applicators

Information has been obtained on a cohort of professional pesticide applicators which will be followed prospectively. The cohort consists of 16,126 males employed for three months or more between 1967 and 1976 by any of three nationwide pest control companies. Deaths which occurred between 1967 and 1976 were reported by the Social Security Administration as a result of a search of its records. Overall, 311 deaths were ascertained, giving a standardized mortality ration (SMR) of 84. SMRs were over 100 for three causes of death--cancer of the lung (115), cancer of the skin (173) and cancer of the bladder (277). The confidence intervals of two of these ratios include 100, and the observed numbers therefore do not differ significantly from those expected. For bladder cancer the excess is on the border of statistical significance (p less than 0.05). The excess of deaths from lung cancer was not seen for applicators classified as termite control operators, a group more likely to be exposed to chlordane and heptachlor. There were significantly low SMRs for cancer of the digestive organs (46) and for other diseases of the digestive (55) and respiratory (29) systems. Deaths from cerebrovascular disease were also less than expected, though not significantly so.