Organophosphate poisoning
Organophosphate pesticides are one of the top causes of poisoning worldwide, with an annual incidence of poisonings among agricultural workers varying from 3-10% per country.
Organophosphate
Organophosphates (OPs) were among the most widely used insecticides until the 21st century. And until the mid 1990s, general pesticide regulation was dependent on the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA) and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) passed in 1938 and 1947, respectively. In 1993, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was bound by a pledge made to Congress to significantly reduce the amount of pesticides used in the United States, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, along with the Food and Drug Administration, joined the EPA in this commitment. Then, in 1996, The Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) was signed into law to strengthen the regulation of pesticide in food and make regulation practices more consistent. One way that this strengthening was accomplished was through mandating aggregate and cumulative exposure risk assessments in derivative food tolerance levels. The EPA selected OPs as the first class of pesticides for assessing food tolerances because of their specific toxicity behavior as acetylcholinesterase inhibitors.