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| Poster #233 High Pesticide Exposure Events and Olfactory Impairment Among U.S. Farmers |
| Shengfang Song1, Brenda L. Plassman2, Yaqun Yuan1, Zhehui Luo1, Julie Fleenor2, Corrine Madsen2, Heather MacDonald2, Scott Davis2, Jayant M. Pinto3, Christine G. Parks4, Jonathan N. Hofmann5, Laura E. Beane Freeman5, Dale P. Sandler4, Honglei Chen1 1Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States 2Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, United States 3University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States 4National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Durham, NC, United States 5National Cancer Institute, Rockville, MD, United States |
Background: Environmental exposures, such as pesticides, may contribute to olfactory impairment (OI) in older adults, but empirical evidence is limited. Objectives: To examine the association between high pesticide exposure events (HPEEs – e.g., major accidental spills) and OI in the Pesticide and Sense of Smell Study (PASS), a sub-cohort of the Agricultural Health Study (AHS). Methods: PASS included 2,545 predominantly white male farmers (aged 70.3±9.6), sampled from the AHS Phase 4 follow-up (2013-2015), who completed the 12-item Brief Smell Identification Test (B-SIT) in 2020–2021. We defined OI as a B-SIT score ≤8. Farmers also self-reported their olfaction status before the test and answered questions about their experience completing the B-SIT. HPEEs were reported both in PASS and prior AHS surveys. We used a doubly robust inverse probability of censoring weighted target maximum likelihood estimation to assess associations between HPEEs and OI-related outcomes, accounting for sampling design, missingness data, and potential confounders. Results: Using the HPEE reported in PASS as an example, compared to those who never had a HPEEs, farmers with a history of HPEEs had a 30% higher risk of self-reported OI (relative risk/RR = 1.30, 95% CI: 1.04, 1.62). However, HPEEs were not associated with B-SIT-tested OI (RR = 0.97, 95% CI: 0.83, 1.15) or perceived testing experience, including reporting substantial difficulty in identifying B-SIT odors (RR = 0.94, 95% CI: 0.78, 1.13) and reporting them as very weak (RR = 1.01, 95% CI: 0.78, 1.30). Similar results were obtained in the analyses using HPEE data from previous AHS surveys. Conclusions: HPEEs were associated with subjective complaint of olfactory loss but not with objectively-tested olfaction among farmers, which warrants further investigation. |