Vol. 1, Issue 12, Part A (2015)

Abstract
Introduction: Regarding pesticide exposure, many reports dealing with Sister chromatid exchange (De Ferrari et al., 1991; Garaj-Vrhovac and Zeljezic, 2001; Shaham et al., 2001) and Single cell gel electrophoresis (Garaj-Vrhovac and Zeljezic, 2000; Zeljezic and Garaj-Vrhovac, 2001) found significant increases in these biomarkers, providing suggestive evidence of genotoxic effects induced by pesticides. The present study aimed to assess the genotoxic effects of the pesticides on occupationally exposed agricultural workers at paddy cultivation.rnMethods: Sample size of the present study includes 30 agricultural workers exposed to pesticides in Kakinada, East Godavari District, Andhra Pradesh, India and 20 healthy normal individuals of the same age and sex from the same region who are not exposed to pesticides as the controls, with age above 20 during the period March 2015 to September 2015. 5ml of blood sample collected from both study and control groups for genotoxicity study, by using comet assay and micronuclei assay.rnResults: The comet tail length mean value of exposed people to pesticides was high when compared with the nonexposed people to pesticides. Significant increase in micronuclei and binucleated cells was observed in people exposed to pesticides compared to nonexposed controls, where as the mean frequency of single nucleated cells in nonexposed controls was more when compared with the exposed individuals.rnConclusions: The present study correlates with the findings of earlier studies carried out in India and other countries. It emphasizes the workers exposed to pesticides presented more genomic damages than non exposed people either evaluated by comet assay or micronuclei assay.