Relationships of perception of health risks by use of pesticides: a man-environment look

The use of agricultural pesticides is increasingly linked to public health problems and negative impacts on the environment. Furthermore, Brazilian environmental agencies lack protective actions. Our objective in this study was to analyze the process that leads to the perception of the risks associated with the use of pesticides in the riverside agricultural communities of the San Francisco Valley in northeastern Brazil. We conducted a qualitative literature review, applying the Constructivist Grounded Theory to the analysis of published scientific articles. The elements of the perception process that we identified are (1) the environment; (2) conditioning factors; (3) perception of the human body; (4) memory; (5) socio-cognitive processing; (6) automatic response; (7) decision-making process; and (8) behavior. Each of these elements and their relationships indicate the location of the causes of inadequate perception, and thus guide potential solutions.