November 2024 – The IMPRESS project is completed and this website will no longer be updated

November 2024

Our final two IMPRESS publications are available. Samuel Fuhrimann led the publication reporting the impact of different original and recalled exposure measures on the associations between occupational exposure to pesticides and neurobehavioral outcomes. This can be accessed at the following link: https://doi.org/10.1093/annweh/wxae025. Our final publication gives the IMPRESS project teams response to the question ‘How can exposure assessment for pesticides in epidemiological studies be improved?’ and this is accessible via https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2024.109013

The project is now completed and the team would like to take this final opportunity to thank all those who participated in the study, our Scientific Advisory Board members and our sponsor, Crop Life Europe.

November 2023

The project team are delighted to announce two new publications. Samuel Fuhrimann led the publication reporting self-reported and urinary biomarker-based measures of exposure to glyphosate and mancozeb and sleep problems among smallholder farmers in Uganda. This can be accessed at the following link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2023.108277. Will Mueller led the publication which reports on the factors influencing occupational exposure to pyrethroids and glyphosate, based on an analysis of urinary biomarkers in Malaysia, Uganda and the United Kingdom. This can be accessed at the following link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2023.117651

March 2023

Members of project team recently gave two presentations at the recent 29th International Symposium on Epidemiology in Occupational Health, EPICOH, conference in Mumbai. Samuel Fuhrimann’s presentation was entitled “Occupational Exposure to Pesticides And  Neurobehavioral Outcomes: Impact Of Different Exposure Measures on the Association” and Hans Kromhout’s “Performance of self reported and urinary biomarker based measures of exposure to glyphosate and mancozeb in a study on sleep problems among smallholder farmers in Uganda”.  Links to these presentations can be found at our conferences and publications page.

September / October 2022

The project team have been busy presenting their work at several scientific forum. Will Mueller presented findings linked to our WP3 work at the ISEE conference. Will provided an overview of our analysis of urinary biomarker concentrations from samples collected from farmers in Malaysia, Uganda and the UK. Hans Kromhout and Karen Galea provided high level overviews of the IMPRESS publications to date at the ISES conference in Lisbon and UK & Ireland Exposure Sciences meetings. Links to these presentations can be found at our conferences and publications page.

April 2022

Well done Johan Ohlander (lead author) on the publication of the IMPRESS article “Impact of occupational pesticide exposure assessment method on risk estimates for prostate cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and Parkinson’s disease: results of three meta-analyses” in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine. The findings are summarised as follows, with the full text of the paper being available here

• We conducted three meta-analyses to specifically investigate how the type of exposure assessment method influenced summary risk estimates of prostate cancer (PC), non Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) and Parkinson’s disease.
• Exposure assessment method was not associated with significantly different summary risk estimates for any of the analysed health outcomes.
• Study design (for cancer studies), publication year (for studies on NHL) and geographic region where the study was conducted (for PC), showed a larger effect on the summary risk estimates than the applied exposure assessment method.

Feb 2022

The project team are pleased to announce a further publication from the IMPRESS project. Will Mueller led authorship of our manuscript which reports “Recall of exposure in UK farmers and pesticide applicators: trends with follow-up time”. This manuscript is freely available from here.

Jan 2022

What a great start to the New Year! Delighted to announce another publication from the IMPRESS project. Will Mueller led authorship of our manuscript which aimed to evaluate Ugandan smallholder farmers’ recall of pesticide use and exposure determinants over a two-year period. This manuscript is freely available from here.

October 2021

The IMPRESS project presented three oral presentations at the EPICOH conference, 25-28th October. These included reporting on a pilot study aimed at investigating urinary pesticide metabolite levels among Malaysian farm workers (26th October) (linked to our WP3 work), assessment of the recall ability of pesticide users in Uganda and the UK (linked to our WP2 work) and the impact of occupational pesticide exposure assessment methods on risk estimates for prostate cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and Parkinson’s (linked to our WP4 work) (both 28th October).

June 2021

At the 14th UK/Ireland Occupational & Environmental Epidemiology Meeting, 4th June 2021, we presented some of our findings on recall bias in epidemiological studies of pesticide use in the IMPRESS study. A link to the presentation can be found at our conferences and publications page.

March 2020

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and World Health Organization (WHO) have recently published ‘Guidelines for personal protection when handling and applying pesticide – International Code of Conduct on Pesticide Management’. These guidelines are intended to provide guidance for preventing the risk of pesticides by reducing exposure with use of effective personal protection, particularly personal protective equipment. The guidelines are designed primarily for use by government authorities in charge of pesticide management and risk reduction but may also be useful in sectors such as the pesticide industry, nongovernmental organizations and other relevant entities.

The project team are also pleased to advise that our publication “Improving Exposure Assessment Methodologies for Epidemiological Studies on Pesticides: Study Protocol” has now been published online by JMIR Research Protocols. This publication, led by our colleagues at HSE, is freely available from here

February 2020

The project team are pleased to advise that our publication “Systematic review of methods used to assess exposure to pesticides in occupational epidemiology studies, 1993-2017” has now been published online by OEM. This publication summarises results from a review exercise led by our colleagues at the Institute for Risk Assessment Studies (IRAS), the Netherlands.

Our WP2 and WP3 work in Ugandan and UK farmers has now stopped and has now entered the data and laboratory analysis phase.

Participant recruitment for the component of IMPRESS associated to the Study of Health in Agricultural Work (SHAW) recently commenced and will be ongoing over the coming months.

September 2019

A paper describing the generic protocol for the methods applied within WP2 and WP3 of IMPRESS has been submitted for publication in the peer reviewed literature. Writing of the paper has been led by Kate Jones from the Health and Safety Executive, UK.

June 2019

Our WP2 and WP3 work has been expanded to include surveying and biological monitoring of participants in an ongoing study among small scale farmers from Uganda with ethical clearances being sought from the relevant national bodies. The work is led by the Institute for Risk Assessment Studies (IRAS), the Netherlands.

Field work in the Malaysian part of the study has been completed with the study entering its analytical phase.

April 2019

The first research outputs of the study have been submitted for publication in the peer reviewed literature. The submitted article summarises results from a review exercise led by our colleagues at the Institute for Risk Assessment Studies (IRAS), the Netherlands mapping the use of the different exposure assessment approaches in epidemiological studies published within the last 25 years.

Ethical clearance for the component of IMPRESS associated to the Study of Health in Agricultural Work (SHAW) has been obtained by the University of Manchester Ethics Committee (Ref: 2019-5987-9976).

March 2019

The UK components of the study related to the PIPAH study population within WP2 and WP3 have been granted ethical approval by the ethics committee of Sheffield University (reference no. HSL28/2018 and HSL29/2019, respectively). Field work has been initiated with the first invitation and consent letters being distributed to potential participants of the PUHS and PIPAH studies.

A paper providing an outline of the study and involved methodology has been published at the journal of Outlooks on Pest Management. The papers full reference is “Galea, K.S., Basinas, I., Cherrie, J.W., Fuhrimann, S., Harding, A.H., Jones, K., Kromhout, H., Ohlander, J., Povey, A., Ahmad, Z.N.S. and van Tongeren, M., 2019. Impress: Improving Exposure Assessment Methodologies for Epidemiological Studies on Pesticides. Outlooks on Pest Management, 30(1), pp.18-19.”. The full text of the paper is available here.

January 2019

The Independent Advisory Board held its second meeting with the project team on 11th December 2018. Copies of the meeting minutes and the Advisory Boards independent report of the meeting are provided below:

IMPRESS Advisory Board meeting minutes
IMPRESS Advisory Board independent report

Based on the discussions with the AB the project duration has been extended by year under a no further cost agreement with the funder.

On the 12th December 2018 the project team also met with ECPA representatives at a meeting Chaired by the AB Chair to discuss the progress of the IMPRESS project as per Section F of the project governance document.

A copy of the minutes of this meeting is provided below:
Meeting minutes with funder DEC 2018.pdf

December 2018

Dr Karen Galea will give a presentation on IMPRESS design and up to date results at the International Fresenius Conference “Worker, Operator, Bystander and Resident Exposure and Risk Assessment”, taking place in Mainz, Germany between 6 and 7th of December 2018.

The Independent Advisory Board held its second meeting with the project team on 11th December 2018, with the project team meeting the Sponsor, ECPA, on the 12th December 2018. Copies of the minutes and the Advisory Board’s independent report will be made available early 2019.

The World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki 2013 states in article 35: Every research study involving human subjects must be registered in a publicly accessible database before recruitment of the first subject. We have registered the IMPRESS project at https://www.researchregistry.com (ID: researchregistry4292) and will update this public repository with details of the project accordingly.

September 2018

Dr. Johan Olander delivered an oral presentation at the X2018 conference summarising the preliminary study results acquired from a review study performed as part of WP1 (Review the methods and techniques of exposure assessment in occupational epidemiology) of the project. Overall, 2314 papers were included in an analysis demonstrating that indirect methods of exposure assessments remain the norm for pesticide epidemiology. Increases in the use of self-reported exposures and Jeb-exposure matrix applications have also been recorded. A copy of Dr Ohlander’s complete presentation can be found on our Conferences/Publications page.

An overview of the project was also provided at the same conference in the form of a poster presentation by Dr. Ioannis Basinas. A copy of the poster is available on our Conferences/Publications page.

June 2018

IMPRESS was included in Professor John Cherrie’s presentation within the PRE-COURSE ON: MODERN METHODS IN OCCUPATIONAL EPIDEMIOLOGY held as part of the European Educational Programme in Epidemiology (EEPE). The pre-course was a training school co-ordinated by COST Action CA16216 “Network on the Coordination and Harmonisation of European Occupational Cohorts” and took place at Florence, Italy, between the 11-15 June 2018. A copy of his presentation can be found here.

IMPRESS will have two presentations at the X2018 conference taking place in Manchester, UK including a poster presentation on the design of the study and an oral summary of the findings of WP1.

April 2018

IMPRESS was presented by Kate Jones at the 32nd International Congress on Occupational health, which took place in Dublin, Ireland between April 29 – May 4, 2018. A copy of the submitted abstract can be found on our Conferences/Publications page.

March 2018

An overview of the project was presented at the ECCA-ECPA – Crop Protection European Regulatory Conference by Dr Ioannis Basinas. The conference took place in Brussels 7-8th March 2018. A copy of the presentation can be found on our Conferences/Publications page.

February 2018

The Independent Advisory Board held its first meeting with the project team on 15th December 2017. Copies of the meeting minutes and the Advisory Boards independent report of the meeting are provided below:

IMPRESS Advisory Board meeting minutes
IMPRESS Advisory Board independent report

Dr. Karen Galea will be presenting an overview of the project at the ECCA-ECPA – Crop Protection European Regulatory Conference, taking place in Brussels 7-8th March 2018.

October 2017

Kate Jones presented a poster introducing the project at the ISBM conference Naples, 1-4 October 2017.

A copy of this poster can be found on our Conferences/Publications page.

September 2017

This three year project has officially started and the project team are very excited to commence work.

We are particularly pleased to announce our Independent Advisory Board, who are as follows:

Prof Aaron Blair (Chair), National Cancer Institute (USA)
Prof Len Levy, Cranfield University (UK)
Dr Mark Montforts, RIVM (The Netherlands)
Prof Silvia Fustinoni, University of Milan (Italy)

The project team will meet with the Advisory Board later in 2017 to discuss our plans and progress to date.

Kate Jones will be presenting a poster introducing the project at the ISBM conference taking place in Naples, 1-4 October 2017