Suicide and Pesticide Use among Pesticide Applicators and Their Essay

Suicide and Pesticide Use among Pesticide Applicators and Their Spouses in the Agricultural Health Study - Essay Example is associated with the exposure to the "organophosphate pesticides." Even with the many deaths associated with the use of pesticides such as OP and the chlorpyrifos, the articles sole purpose focuses centrally on how the organophosphate pesticides(OP) results to suicide among the users and their spouses in the agricultural health study (Beard, et al., 2011). As per the methodology, the article focuses on the agricultural health studys cohort (1993-1997) who provided data on the lifestyle and the demographic factors, and pesticide use and exposure at the beginning of enrollment (1993). Most of these applicators were men with women forming the most spouses. The information was recorded systematically according to the age, the location, the sex, and the health diagnostic of the cohort. The authors also assessed the rate of exposure of each individual, the statistical methods used was the "COX proportional regression model." The main reason for choosing the model was that it would show the estimated hazard ratios, another model used in the article includes the stratifying models. In the stratifying model, the categorization was in terms of using protective gear (chemical resistant gears), the number of children, and the location (Beard, et al., 2011). Under the Cox model, the researchers investigated both the applicators and their spouses combined, this is because the data gathered relating to the spouses was too little, hence could not be analyzed alone. Later the covariates associated with suicides in both age-adjusted and age-adjusted models and the unadjusted models, under this they used the "Schwarz Bayesian and the Akaike information criterions." Under the stratifying models the researchers compares the HRs using the two strata, these models included the race and the marital status. The marital status and the race categories include the individuals that had ever used pesticides and those diagnosed with diabetes. The authors results collected showed that the