Meeting of the International PPE Consortium, in Germany, focuses on the decontamination of agricultural protective clothing

Researchers Hamilton Ramos and Viviane Aguiar Ramos, representatives of Brazil in the International Consortium of Personal Protective Equipment in Agriculture, present studies carried out in the country during the meeting of the global entity, which takes place from the 22nd, in the city of Limburguerhof, in Germany. Leading the IAC-Quepia PPE Quality program, they developed, in partnership with researchers from the United States, a method to evaluate the decontamination, after washing, of clothing used in the application of agrochemicals.

Current director of the Engineering and Automation Center (CEA), of the Agronomic Institute (IAC), an agency of the Secretariat of Agriculture and Supply of the State of São Paulo, located in the city of Jundiaí, Hamilton Ramos is also coordinator of the IAC-Quepia program. Over the past few months, his team has evaluated cotton-polyester agricultural PPE used in several agricultural countries.

“These clothing models are the focus of studies around the exposure of agrochemical applicators, conducted in European countries, such as France, where scholars have raised questions linked to the ISO 27065 standard, related to the amount of products retained in the fabric. We even considered the possibility of the pesticide retained on clothing reaching the rural worker’s skin when reusing PPE”, reveals Viviane Aguiar Ramos.

According to Hamilton Ramos, studies carried out in Brazil provide information on contamination linked to washing and also the storage of protective parts. He also highlights that the results of the contamination methodology, obtained in the laboratory, will be compared to those of the contamination of clothing used by three farmers, who used manual knapsack sprayers in areas cultivated with grapes.

The full results of the Brazilian study will be released after the meeting in Germany, according to the researchers.