Relationships between the Use of Pesticides and Suicide - Essay Example

The information was recorded systematically according to the age, location, sex, and health diagnostic of the cohort. The authors also assessed the rate of exposure of each individual, the statistical methods used were 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, and this is because the data gathered relating to the spouses was too little. Hence it 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 criteria." Under the stratifying models, the researchers compare the HRs using the two strata, and these models included race and 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 risk for suicide was high for the participants more than 65 years of age, the divorced participants, those living in North Carolina, those participants that smoked, those participants that drank alcohol. Many of the participants with the risk of committing suicide were men, and however, even with the past research associating most of the suicides with the OP, the studies suicide mainly revolved around Pyrethroid insecticides that had a higher HR (1.09; 95%) (Beard et al., 2011). Also, as per the research, most of the applicators did not show relationships between the use of pesticides and suicide.

The authors carefully analyzed the results, and in most of the cases, no evidence was found proving the association between pesticide use and suicides. Through carefully analyzing the results the authors answered, the hypothesis was providing explanations for their conclusion; they provided new information contrary to what many researchers reported before. The research work in the article is significant as it changes the past understanding of how pesticides contribute to too many deaths among farmers; the interpretations refute the past observations as much past research argue that pesticides use is associated with the death of farmers (Beard et al., 2011).