Evaluation of an educational intervention for farming families to protect their children from pesticide exposure

A culturally appropriate educational intervention was developed and directed towards farming families in Menoufia governorate, Egypt, to improve their knowledge and practices in protecting their children from exposure to pesticides. Parents were randomly assigned to either a lecture or videotape training group. Ability to recall information or improve practices among parents was evaluated in 3 sessions: pretraining and 2 weeks and 1 month after training. Knowledge and practice scores after training of younger and more educated participants were significantly higher than older, less educated participants. Knowledge and practice performance of the videotape group was better than the lecture group and in both groups the improvement of knowledge scores after training was significantly higher than that of practice scores

Hearing threshold for workers in a printing office

Forty five exposed workers, [in a printing office in Menoufia University], and 45 controls were chosen for this study. All were subjected to clinical evaluation [personal history and clinical examination] and laboratory tests [determination of blood lead and pure tone audiometry]. Environmental study included detection of total respirable lead in fumes and particles in the work atmosphere in addition to measuring noise level. The results revealed that the total respirable lead was up to 23.7 ug/m3 and noise level up to 50 dB. The mean blood lead level for exposed workers was significantly higher than that for controls [36.94 +/- 4.36 and 11.5 +/- 1.22 ug/dl, respectively] There was a significant increase in hearing thresholds among exposed than controls at frequencies 1000-8000 Hz. Within the exposed group, there was a significant association between blood lead level and hearing threshold as one increased as the other increased specially at the frequency of 8000 Hz. Also, the hearing threshold of the exposed workers got higher as the duration of work increased reaching a maximum at the frequency of 8000 Hz. In conclusion, exposure to lead could lead to increase of hearing threshold level even if exposure to noise was below threshold limit value of noise exposure

hazardous effects of the red food colouring substance [new-coccine] on the liver of albino rats

The addition of artificial color to food and sweet, consumed by school children, is a field of great health concern in Egypt. The red coloring substance [new coccine] was added to the food and water of albino rats for 6 months. Paraffin sections from the liver of the experimental animals were stained with Hx, E, and PAS reaction. Frozen sections were stained for evaluation of acid phosphatase and succinic dehydrogenase activities. Ultra thin sections for transmission E/M study were also prepared. Hx, E and PAS stains showed disturbance of the architecture of the liver lobules, cellular degeneration, vacuolation of the hepatocytes and depletion of glycogen. Increased acid phosphatase and decreased succinic dehydrogenase activities appeared in frozen sections which were treated for these enzymes. Transmission, E/M sections showed swelling of the mitochondria, rupture of their membranes and cristae