Farmers’ Families Study in Denmark

We have included 44 farmer families with in total 152 participants mainly from Zealand and Funen. The families have from 1 to 3 children participating in the project. 29 families had 1 child; 15 families had 2 children and 5 families had 3 children. The mean age of the adults was 44 years (range 32-67 years) and for the children 11 years (range 5-19 years). All the farmers were males and all the spouses females. Of the spouses were 9 farmers too.

The families are distributed with 6 families in the group of fruit growers, 36 in the group of cultivators of plants and two families have a combination of both. A considerable part of the cultivators of plants also have pig breeding, dairy cattle or bull calves, but meet the requirement of working outside in daylight for a minimum of 6 hours per day including time spent inside vehicles including tractors.

Recruitment: It took us about a month to recruit the farmers per telephone, and afterwards it took us from the end of April to the middle of May (4 weeks) to include the families on the farms. We recruited them with help from agricultural consultants, by intern connections in farmer groups for development and networking, and finally just by a countless number of contacts to random farmers. It was quite a hazard to localize families that fulfilled our criteria’s, so our experience is, that it can take some time.

Inclusion and 1st visit: At the inclusion on the farm they were again informed about the project and the purpose, they signed their consent, we filled in the data sheet together with the participants, they decided their skin type by Fitzpatrick and finally we made an objective examination.

Assessments: We assessed their hair colour and eye colour, noted their weight and height, measured their pigment protection factor (PPF) with the Optimizer, graded their number of lentigenes on shoulders and forearms, and at last we counted their number of moles on arms and front of the thighs.

In 15 random families we collected a sample of urine and froze it down for later analyzes of CPD.

2nd visit: During late June and the beginning of July we made our second visit on the farms, where we tapped the UV dosimeters, and in the CPD group we collected a second urine sample. The urine sample is supplied with a questionnaire about clothing/sun-exposed skin for the five previous days.

In the overall perspective we have a good compliance (only dropout of one 5 years old child so far, caused by immaturity) and the wristwatches/UV dosimeters are functioning well.

3rd visit (tapping only) is scheduled to August 2009 and the last visit collecting the dosimeters in October. Then most of the participants will come to the ward in February 2010.

General problems: We have had some problems with the independent watch showing the time within the UV dosimeter which in many cases goes wrong (this is an irritant for especially the farmers, that are dependent of knowing the time), and we have changed it as quickly as possible. It is our clear impression that the watches are in an exposed position on the farmers/childrens wrists, because of their hard work and lifestyle, and some accidents and broken watches must be expected.

Finally we feel the participants are enthusiastic about the project and we are optimistic about the rest of the course.