Design
The farmers participating in the study were from the villages where the Plag-Bol project was taking place, and the data were collected before awareness raising or any other activity took place in the project. The participating villages were selected after consultations with the local farmers' representatives.
They were known to be villages with significant use of pesticides and a good accessibility by road or river thus facilitating later project intervention activities. Farmers were invited to village meetings, where they were briefed about the study, its relevance and what health dangers the blood tests could pose.
They were asked to volunteer for the study and then interviews and tests were carried out on 201 farmers of which 19 were females.
They had a mean age of 36 years (range 15–79), had been working for 20 years in agriculture (range 1–60), and cultivated on average 1.6 hectares of land (range 0–11). All participants signed an informed consent form before the interviews were conducted and the blood samples were taken.