Methods for the Identification of Outliers and Their Influence on Exposure Assessment in Agricultural Pesticide Applicators: A Proposed Approach and Validation Using Biological Monitoring

The “patch” approach for skin exposure assessment can easily be combined with biological monitoring in real-life pesticide studies. Nevertheless, this approach is sensitive to outliers, with values markedly deviating from other members of the sample, which can result in a gross overestimation of exposure. This study aimed at developing methods for outlier identification and validating them while using biological monitoring. Twenty-seven workers applying mancozeb in Italian vineyards participated in this study. Their skin exposure was estimated while using the patch methodology, while ethylene-thiourea (ETU) was measured in the 24-h post-exposure urine as a biomarker of exposure. The outliers were detected using methods that were based on the multiplication of the median, the median absolute deviation, and boxplots. The detection rate varied between 2.3% and 17.3%. The estimated median skin exposure of 3.2 μg was reduced to 1.2 μg when the modified Z score was used. The highest reduction in the skin exposure was above 54 μg. The use of the modified Z score for outlier detection resulted in an increase in the correlation coefficient between the skin exposure and the urine ETU levels from 0.46 to 0.71, which suggested the validity of the approach. Future studies should standardize and improve the methods for pesticide exposure and risk assessment.