Hi, my names Brian Sebade and I work for 
University of Wyoming Extension. 
I'm an area educator and focus on agriculture 
and horticulture education. 
Today we will be talking about pesticide 
hazards and first aid.
 
This is a really important chapter that we're 
gonna go through.  We are going to start 
looking at things 
as far as what is a hazard.  So we have a little 
formula. 
We have toxicity times exposure, so when we 
think about a hazard we might have something 
that is really toxic
and then it's maybe a short exposure time. So, 
we can have something really toxic a short 
exposure which equals a really high hazard.
it might also have something that is fairly low in 
toxicity but then we have a 
really long exposure to that product, that 
chemical whatever it might be which can
also equal a really large hazard.  Now we can 
also have have a low toxicity in a really short 
time period for exposure
which obviously would equal a smaller or lower 
hazard.                     
So some potential harmful effects of 
pesticides.  we'll offer start talking about local 
We want to first start talking about 
local affects. 
And so when we talk about local effects, what 
we're really looking at, 
is an injury from a point of contact.  
so this might be the skin
it might be some discoloration, irritation.  
Things as far as itching, a rash, a blister 
Maybe we see something where it is burned 
actually.
Might also see swelling.  
Ya know, this might be also burning of the 
eyes, nose, mouth, throat 
Just those certain specific areas of the body 
where we've had contact 
and we see something that's happening.
We can also have systemic effects 
so what this is talking about, 
is we might have a poison or a substance that 
enters the body 
but then it affects other other parts of the body.  
So, for instance, 
say we accidentally drink something
and then it ends up affecting the kidneys 
or another organ of the body. 
Basically it is working through out the body's 
system.
The other thing we are going to talk about is 
allergic affects or allergies. 
We all know we have different types of 
allergies, 
some of us might be more sensitive towards 
something that causes allergies 
whereas others never have a reaction 
whatsoever. 
So, some people might be allergic to nuts for 
example
while others are fine to eat nuts, be around 
nuts and never had any issues. 
Again these can cause a lot of the same types 
of things 
that we might see with toxicity issues.
This might be blisters, hives, itching of the 
eyes, 
can have some illness maybe it's something 
like asthma
but we really need to keep in mind that we can 
have allergic affects that also happen. 
So, when we talk about toxicity there's really 
four main areas that were thinking about
that these enter the body.  
So the first one would be the dermal.  Dermal 
means your skin.  
so one of the major things that we always see 
is not wearing gloves, 
probably also thinking about not wearing the 
right types of gloves 
So we will go into more detail about this when 
we go through the other chapters related to 
PPE or Personal Protective Equipment. 
So, when we get things on our hands 
its usually from not wearing gloves 
maybe we don't wash our hands properly
 
after handling pesticides. 
think about a container.  
Maybe we're... middle of January and we are 
working on some equipment and we forgot to 
wear 
gloves then we end up touching our eyes or we 
end up getting contact on our skin that way. 
The other thing is thinking about washing 
hands, where we
are using the toilet, we want to think about 
protecting ourselves so we don't have 
splashing or spilling from
pesticides on the skin so that might be when 
we are filling up tanks, those sorts of things
We also want to think about spray or drift.  
Obviously its windy in 
Wyoming, so we tend to have a lot of drift 
issues from time to time. So we 
want to be conscious about that.  Again going 
back to PPE we can minimize that amount.   
Also paying attention to the weather will also 
help minimize that risk.  
We can also have dermal exposure when we're 
applying pesticides in windy weather above 
your head for 
example.  Obviously that's a good way to get a 
lot on your face.  We are going to go to little bit 
more detail
as to why that's a major risk here just a few 
slides.   
Other part of that would be thinking about 
touching...treated plants 
things that we have already sprayed
Maybe we actually end up putting a pesticide 
on livestock and then we end up handling them 
later.
Next we can move into eye exposure. 
So, thinking about eye exposure we want to 
consider rubbing eyes with contaminated 
gloves or hands
if we have an itchy eye, we obviously want to 
keep our hands away from
our face, try and find some other way to itch 
those eyes or at least clean our hands before 
we do that
again, when we are mixing we might have 
some issues with splashing so 
getting pesticides in our eyes.  Safety glasses 
are always great to help minimize that
We also want to think about handling dry 
formulations when we're not wearing eye 
protection 
again, easy for those types of materials to get 
into our eyes
Lastly with eye exposure, again we need to 
think about windy weather 
Especially true here in Wyoming. 
Oral Exposure.
So this one sometimes can trip us up, because 
obviously it's not like we're 
going out thinking about drinking these 
pesticides right?  
Now there's different ways that we can actually
get them into our mouths.  
So again not washing hands before we eat, 
maybe we end up touching a cigarette
with hands that haven't been cleaned 
maybe that cigarette touches something else 
that's been contaminated and then we get it 
into our mouth that way.
If you partake in chewing tobacco, again 
unclean hands can get that into your mouth 
directly as well 
We also need to think about pesticides 
splashing in our mouth,
again if we're mixing, and we don't have a face 
shield or face covering that can splash you.
Another thing we might not always think about 
that is by our mouth a lot 
would probably be a cell phone.  So, we start to 
use cell phones a lot 
more this day and age so thinking about 
everything that might be contaminated and 
ways it might enter.
Another example might be we use a knife to 
cut out the top of a 
pesticide container, that little tin foil, 
then we use that knife to cut up an apple for 
lunch and we end up getting exposure that way 
as well.
Lastly we're gonna talk about inhalation. So 
this is getting things in through the air ways.   
So this might be handling pesticides in a poorly 
vented area. 
so for a lot of us, maybe this is a shop where 
we've got all the windows and doors closed 
just a confined area or maybe it's the back 
room where we are mixing things.
We're handling dusts or powder again, that's a 
really easy way to get things into our air ways 
but we might also need to think about...have we
properly fitted a respirator or are we wearing 
some sort of covering around our face 
to minimize that risk of getting something into 
our air ways.
And then again, last but not least, we've hit on 
this a bunch already 
but spray drift or different types of dust that 
might get into our air ways that way.
Ok, so this next slide we have a picture and 
kind of a visual 
of what's happening with the human body, and 
this really goes back to the dermal
exposure that we talk about a minute ago 
so we talk about not spraying above the head 
so, as you can see these are some different 
rates that the skin
is going good to absorb chemicals that come 
into contact with skin 
So, as we can see with the head, the face, the 
neck 
we have a lot of these areas that absorb 
pesticides with different types of chemicals 
more readily than other areas
so, we look into forearm for example it's ya 
know, 8.6 as compared to the ear canals at 
almost 50 percent
so, we have a lot more that can get absorbed 
through our face in those areas 
than some of the areas say as far as a fore 
arms or the hands
Obviously, we talked about it earlier but  
making sure to wash your hands 
before and after using the restroom is really 
important.
Lastly, we also want to think about our feet. 
They may not come to our mind that much but 
it's really important to think about 
preventing exposure to our feet.
We'll talk more about this in the PPE section 
but we need to think about the boots and the 
way where those boots to try to minimize that 
risk.
Ok, so product toxicity and health concerns. 
What does acute toxicity mean?
it's usually a one time exposure.  What we're 
talking about here is not
using a pesticide are product for an extended 
period time 
over multiple years, multiple weeks, we're 
talking about going out
and spraying that afternoon and then we're 
having issues that way potentially.
So with that in mind, the acute toxicity, so one 
time exposure, 
we wanna now talk about signal words and 
symbols.
so these are going to be things as far as 
danger, warning, or caution. 
This is going appear on the front panel 
pesticide label 
and is really important that when we find a 
product that we are looking for this signal word.
So what this indicates is how acutely toxic the  
product is to humans.
Right?  So what we're talking about is
I've got this product we think about toxicity
we think about exposure time 
and what am I willing to use or what is probably 
the best product I can use thinking about my 
safety and the safety of others.  So, this might 
be other coworkers it might be family or it might 
be friends, right?
and so, we want to really think about this. So 
how toxic is it at that one time?
now the signal word it's based on the 
formulation: the active ingredient(s); carriers; 
solvents; and other ingredients
and it indicates the risk of acute effects from 
the four routes of exposure to a pesticide 
product 
and it's based on the one that is the greatest. 
So what this means is if I have a product it 
seems pretty toxic based on the single word
and on that label it says "keep out of eyes" 
I really wanna make sure that when I'm 
applying that product I really adhere to that 
label
and really pay attention that I don't get this 
product in my eyes for example.
When we see that word, we know that it is 
based on one of those four entryways that's the 
greatest
so we need to really make sure as far as the 
personal protective equipment goes that were 
really paying attention of that
and protecting ourselves the best we can. 
Ok, so this is kind of where it gets a little bit 
tricky.  So, the signal word does not indicate 
your risk of delayed effects 
or the chronic effects right, so it's not going to  
tell us what happens if we
end up using this pesticide over many years
or throughout the summer everyday.  It's not 
going to give us that. 
It's also not going to talk to us about the allergic 
effects 
So, we're not gonna probably find on that label 
if 
I have a peanut allergy and I use this product I 
can expect this reaction.  We're not going to 
find that.
That's another thing to keep in mind.  Basically 
we wanna use a single word so we can help 
make good decisions 
about what types of products we want to use 
for what we're trying to control. 
Ok, so we have three categories 
that we have these signal words in. We have 
the first one which is "highly toxic"
so this is gonna be "danger poison" with skull 
and cross bones.  The other one in that 
category is "danger". 
Next, as we move down toxicity decreases 
so we have "moderately toxic" that's going to 
be a single word of "warning"
And then lower, relatively nontoxic will be 
"caution".   
OK, so we're first going to talk about danger 
poison.  These are highly toxic 
they can cause some very serious injuries. Ok? 
So those might be eye or skin injury 
some acute illness and in some cases it might 
even be death.
what we're looking at with this, is basically a 
taste to a teaspoon taken by mouth may cause 
death.
Now what we end up seeing a lot is this term 
called LD50. 
What we're talking about with this LD50 is it's 
basically a term used to talk to us about
how potentially toxic a product is.  
So it's usually represented as either milligrams 
per kilogram
or part per million.  
So they're both interchangeable.  Now when I 
explain this I unusually like to use parts per 
million
to help kind of get visual of how these things 
might be toxic.
as we look at LD50, the LD stands for "Lethal 
Dose" 
and the 50 stands for 50 percent of the 
population 
so the way these are tested is usually with
mice or rats 
at the lab facility. So, what we're looking at 
what this 
is we've got a product so this one for danger 
poison would be zero to 50
milligrams per kilogram or parts per million
So the way I like to think about this is 
with the LD50, the smaller the number, the 
more toxic it is. 
so if we have a room with say 1,000,000 
particles in it
and we've got our test population that's in there 
and it only takes 25 
parts within that 1,000,000 that are in that room 
to kill half the population
that's pretty toxic compared to say we had 
another product where it took 1,000 particles 
within that room of a 1,000,000 to kill half the 
population.
So, as we move through these, the smaller the 
LD50 
the more toxic the product is.  
Basically, it takes less of that product to kill. 
So, we're going to do a little bit of an attitude 
check.
We don't need to worry about this, right? 
I don't photosynthesize, so why should I worry 
about this?
Well, we do need worry about it.  Paraquat is is 
a good example
This is something that's great at controlling 
plants 
it's really useful, it's been applied in many 
different settings, 
but it's really toxic to humans.
So as we can see we have the danger poison 
with skull and crossbones
we really need to pay attention to a product like 
this.
there's been a lot of issues with this product 
throughout the United States, 
so we're not just throwing this up here trying 
scare people 
but, this has been used in many different 
places and there's been a lot of
unfortunately negative impacts that have 
happened.
All right, so as we look at this basically we're  
looking at about a third of an ounce. 
So, if we look a little bit more on the label 
we can see it says "can kill if ingested, acute 
LD50 of paraquat  
150 milligrams per kilogram, rat is 
approximately equal to 30 milligram per 
kilogram, man
about 10 milliliters of the product may be 
lethal".  
So, that's really a small amount of liquid, so if 
we think about an ounce, right? 
That's really a small amount.
Kidney and liver damage may occur after 2 to 3 
days. 
Lung fibrosis after 1 to 3 weeks may cause 
death 
higher doses may cause multi-organ failure and 
death within 2 to 3 days.
there's a lot of bad stuff that can happen. 
Now you're probably thinking: "I follow this label 
I'd be fine, I don't have anything to worry about" 
But, where we've seen a lot of issues with this, 
is people 
sharing these products...they're not keeping the 
label with the product 
and we actually have a lot of accidental people 
consuming this
and then we end up with some major issues 
that way.  
We really want people to pay attention to 
products and have these types of signal words.
Ok, were gonna hit on LD50 again, and again 
it's a lethal dose 
so the amount that's required to kill 50 percent 
of a test population of animals
that's usually rats or mice 
and then we can use this to estimate the 
toxicity of pesticides to humans.  
so we're not using humans, we're extrapolating
that number 
and then moving that to where it can be more 
applicable to humans
Again, the lower the LD50, the more toxic a 
product is. 
You're not usually going to find LD50 on the 
label 
and we want to use this number to help 
compare the relative toxicity of different 
chemicals
So as we're out their purchasing products or 
looking at products to use we can use that
number or that signal word to help us make 
informed decisions
Ok, "danger" that signals that the product is 
highly toxic by at least one route of entry. 
products with (danger) signal words can cause 
severe eye damage 
or skin irritation so again we really want to pay 
attention with these products.  
Most of you've probably heard of the herbicide 
Tordon.
So here we can see Tordon, right? 101 mixture 
and we see that has a danger signal word.
Keep out of reach of children as well.
So what we want pay attention to is the signal 
word 
and then we can also go look at the 
formulation. 
So we can see what those active ingredients 
are.
Ok, "warning" moderately likely to cause acute 
illness or skin or eye irritation from the 
exposure.   
So again, we see the word "moderately" and 
and maybe we 
kind of throw caution to the wind but we really 
still want to be paying attention to
how are using these products
and following the PPE recommendations.
So for a warning, we're looking at a teaspoon 
the 2 tablespoons taken by mouth may cause 
death.  
So again, we're probably not drinking these 
products 
but we need be thinking about ways that we're 
becoming exposed to these types of products.  
So this is going to be an LD50 of 50 to 500 
parts per million 
again a higher number of LD50 
means that it's less toxic than some of those 
danger and danger poison products we just 
talked about.
Ok again, we have something with picloram in 
it 
but we can notice that the formulation is a little 
bit different 
we're missing an ingredient 
from that previous label that we just looked at 
so with this we can now see that we're at a 
warning as opposed to a danger signal word
Ok, finally were going to talk about caution 
that's slightly toxic or relatively nontoxic 
only has a slight 
potential to cause acute illness, 
skin or eye irritation, if any is likely be slight.
so for this were looking at about 2 tablespoons 
or an ounce or more may be 
taken by mouth to cause death.  Again just 
because it has as "caution" doesn't 
that we need to not pay attention. So this is an 
LD50 of  500 to greater than 5000.
again that's a lot more than what we look at 
with danger poison 
but still one of those we need is still pay 
attention to
PPE and making sure we're not exposing 
ourselves that these products.
Again, we've got another similar Tordon product 
different formulation than some of the other 
ones that we've looked at 
and this one is a signal word of "Caution".
So, as we're looking through what products we 
might want to use 
obviously if we can we probably want to go for 
a product with caution
as opposed to danger on the label.
We're going to recap some more just so we 
really understand this 
because this is really important that we get this 
Toxicity is the measure of the ability of a 
pesticide to cause harmful effects.
So we really need to be thinking about that 
when we're thinking about our safety and the 
safety of others.   
That toxicity depends on the active ingredient
the carriers, the other ingredients, and the 
formulation.  
We looked at a few products we've seen how 
they changed a little bit
and how that affects that signal word and 
toxicity.
Finally, we want to think about our formula that 
we talked about in the very beginning 
toxicity times exposure 
and the dose makes the poison we really need 
to think about 
whether it's something with the caution signal 
word 
or something with a danger poison, we need to 
think about the time that we're exposed
of the toxicity of that product and what that 
hazard is going to be for us.
We actually have a table that goes through and 
outlines some everyday 
things that we have in our life and how that 
compares to some different types of pesticides 
So we can look at table salt for example and 
compare that to Banvel 
or maybe we compare it to Tordon.
So, potentially table salt is more toxic as 
compared to Tordon 
depending on how that enters the body.
Kind of an interesting table to go through and 
would suggest that you take a minute to work 
through that.
Chronic toxicity a repeated, long-term exposure 
these are the things we're using day after day, 
were constantly getting exposed we haven't  
properly cleaned
clothes, we're wearing boots that have lots of 
chemicals on the inside and we're constantly 
getting exposure to our feet. 
Definitely want to think about ways to minimize 
the chronic effects. 
So, it's one of the important reasons to follow 
label directions
and can be cautious in handling and applying 
pesticides.
So, thinking about... are we wearing gloves in 
the middle of the winter and we're working on 
equipment
all those sorts of things are really important to  
think about when it comes to chronic toxicity.
For first aid of pesticide poisonings obviously 
we recommend calling the 
American Association of Poison Control 
Centers 
they're staffed 24 hours and they can provide 
you with help.
General first aid, if you get pesticides on the 
skin, pesticides in the eyes, inhalation, 
pesticides in the mouth or swallowed 
How to induce vomiting if appropriate and then 
antidotes. 
So,  for a lot of us we're probably looking at just 
washing but we call the poison control center
and they can help us out with some of those 
issues. 
Now we also want to think about heat stress. 
So as we look at heat stress, 
a lot of the things that we see here 
might kind of look like a pesticide exposure. 
So, as we're out there working, applying these 
pesticides during the heat of the summer
we need to make sure that we're really taking 
care of our bodies
taking some good breaks, staying hydrated, 
that were minimizing risk of heat stress
and that way we don't have different types of 
stresses on the body that might look like 
something
as far a toxicity issue where as its more as just 
a stress.
We want to really think about cooling down if 
you suspect you might have it. 
Again, drink plenty of water, take some breaks 
cool off in some shade or air conditioning.
You'll want to watch it for a lot of our workers. 
Not only ourselves, but those other coworkers 
that we might be out here with.
And that is the end of Chapter 5.
After completing this chapter you now have a 
better idea regarding pesticide hazards and 
first aid.
