Women with potential exposure to pesticides at work or at home took longer to get pregnant than women without pesticide connections.
Pregnant women living in a migrant, farmworker community in California participated in the study. Although all women were pregnant, women who worked in agriculture, lived within 200 feet of agriculture fields or used pesticides in their home took significantly longer to conceive than those who did not have these pesticide exposures.
The findings agree with past studies and add more evidence to this sometimes confusing mix of research outcomes. Many studies have found a relationship between pesticides and male fertility, including effects on sperm health and longer time to pregnancy. However, few studies have examined how pesticide exposure might affect women's ability to get pregnant.
In this study, researchers looked at two types of pesticides: those like DDT that were banned in the 1970s and those currently used in agriculture today.