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Pesticide Application Management Toolset For Worker Protection Standards, Nathan W. Thorson

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The application of Pesticides has become a widely adopted practice within modern agriculture, however this practice poses a significant health risk to farm workers and crop advisors when pesticide exposures occur. Current safety standards require documentation of each application to help mitigate human exposure, yet these standards rely heavily on antiquated data collection formats and complex communication systems putting little emphasis on notification timeliness. Our objective was to reduce the risk of pesticide exposure for all farm workers and crop advisors by utilizing technological automation processes to reduce the number of links within the communication system. This proved successful though …