Denpong Wongwichit, Wattasit Siriwong, Mark G. Robson
Herbicide products have been heavily used by maize farmers in Thailand. The knowledge, attitude, and p ractices of herbicide use and exposure were evaluated the as sociation in maize farmers in Nanoi district, Nan p rovince. The total response rate was 73.3%. The results were found that 79.9% was male and 70.8% was 35-53 year s old. 36.1% reported health effects after spraying. Never theless, 48.6% of maize farmers had high knowledge level, 69.3% had positive attitudes, and 93.9% had good pr actices. Statistically significant associations (p< 0.05) were found between the knowledge and the attitudes (r =0 .37), the knowledge and the practices (r=0.24), and the attitude and the practices (r=0.2). However, the ma jority of maize farmers have high knowledge, positi ve attitude, good practices, but the maize farmers still had her bicides poisoning symptoms. Therefore, double check was necessarily conducted through the qualitative metho d. The important finding was that when the maize fa rmers applied herbicides, they did not use the personal p rotective equipments, because personal protective e quipments could cause discomfort. Moreover, some maize farmer s improperly used personal protective equipments. T hese results were directly opposite to the results that obtained by face to face interview. Therefore, the risk communication and the implementation of personal pr otective equipments are necessary to provide for encouraging their health effect concern and decreas ing their risk of herbicide exposure.
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