Researcher Anugrah Shaw of the University of Maryland Eastern Shore in the United States and her Brazilian counterpart Hamilton Ramos this week completed an important study on forms of contamination and decontamination of PPE or agricultural protective clothing. Coordinator of the IAC Program for Quality of Personal Protective Equipment in Agriculture (Quepia), Ramos has been dedicated for more than 25 years to studies focused on the safety of rural labor.

According to the researcher, also director of the Center for Engineering and Automation (CEA) of the Agronomic Institute (IAC), jundiaí (SP), the joint research aims to evaluate the degree of protective safety that PPE based on cotton and polyester, used in the sprays of agricultural or agrochemical pesticides, deliver to the applicator of these products.

Another relevant point of the study, according to Ramos, concerns the destination to be given to these PPE after the end of their useful life or the shelf life. "We will know if such PPE offer environmental risk, as well as whether they should be disposed of as ordinary waste or, overdue, can still be reused for everyday rural work, except defensive applications."

According to Ramos, with the presence of researcher Anugrah Shaw in Brazil, the researchers end the laboratory phase of the study, which will also determine to what extent, after fixated on the cotton and polyester tissues of PPE, pesticides can reach the skin of the rural worker at the end of the life of protective clothing.

Also according to Ramos, the final report, expected to be drafted in the coming days, will be shared with member researchers of the International Consortium of Personal Protective Equipment in Agriculture, formed by representatives from Germany, France, Belgium, Brazil, the United States and other countries.

The IAC-Quepia program, coordinated by Hamilton Ramos, is the result of a partnership between the private sector and CEA-IAC, an agency of the Department of Agriculture and Supply of the State of São Paulo. It was created 16 years ago and has since contributed to reduce distaste for quality of protective agricultural clothing produced in Brazil, which was 80% of the amount analyzed by the program in 2010, to less than 20% today.

Source: RPA news